Your email deliverability rate is the percentage of the emails you send that reach the primary inbox, rather than spam or junk. It’s the closest thing there is to a deliverability score.
Nothing else tells you whether a real person had the chance to read what you sent.
Key Takeaways
- What it measures: the share of the email you send that reaches the primary inbox.
- The formula: emails in the inbox ÷ emails sent × 100.
- A good rate: above 85% is great, 80 to 85% is good, 75 to 80% is worth watching, below 75% needs action.
- Why published benchmarks disagree: most never say whether bounces are counted in or out.
- What moves it: authentication, list quality, complaint rate and sending consistency.
Most senders never calculate this number. They watch delivery rate instead, which looks reassuring and measures something else entirely.
This guide covers the formula, what counts as good, and what to do when the number falls.
Deliverability Rate vs Delivery Rate
Delivery rate answers whether the receiving server took your email; deliverability rate answers whether a person will ever see it.
The gap between the two is the spam folder. It’s invisible in your sending platform.
| Metric | What it counts | Where spam sits | Who reports it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery rate | Accepted by the receiving server | Counted as delivered | Your platform, by default |
| Deliverability rate | Reached the primary inbox | Counted as a failure | Nobody by default. You have to test |
For the arithmetic on the first one, see how delivery rate is calculated.
What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
Every figure in this section is measured against emails sent, so bounces count against you.
A single benchmark misleads, because a rate healthy for transactional email is a warning sign for cold outreach. What counts as good depends on what you send and who you send it to.
| Rate | Verdict | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Above 85% | Great | Providers trust your domain and content |
| 80 to 85% | Good | Normal for healthy cold outreach |
| 75 to 80% | Watch | Minor list hygiene or authentication gaps |
| Below 75% | Act now | Filtering, authentication or reputation problem |
That scale is the general answer. The table below is the one to use, and where the two disagree the segment wins. A new domain at 70% is on track, not in trouble.
The variable that moves it most is how much prior engagement the recipient already has with your domain.
| Segment | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|
| B2B SaaS | 85 to 90% | 92%+ |
| B2B cold outreach | 80 to 88% | 90%+ |
| B2C marketing | 75 to 85% | 90%+ |
| Transactional | 90 to 95% | 96%+ |
| New domain, first 30 days | 65 to 75% | 85%+ |
*Figures above are estimates drawn from published industry sources, not from a single measured study.
Global average inbox placement runs at about 83.1%. That lands inside the cold outreach and B2C bands, and above the new-domain band. The typical sender isn’t failing. They’re mid-table.
If your number is under 75%, work out how to calculate it properly before you try to fix it.
How to Calculate It
(emails reaching the inbox ÷ emails sent) × 100
It’s measured against emails sent, so bounces count against you. That’s why this number runs lower than versions that strip the bounces out first.
The hard part is the numerator. No standard dashboard reports which folder your mail landed in, which is why most people never calculate this.
A seed-list test is how you get a real figure for it.
| Figure | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sent | 1,000 | |
| Delivered | 950 | What your platform reports |
| Reached the inbox | 760 | |
| Deliverability rate | 760 ÷ 1,000 = 76% | In the watch band, 75 to 80% |
76% percent sounds respectable. It sits in the watch band, and roughly a quarter of that send never reached anyone.
What Affects Your Rate
4 things move this number, and the rest is noise.
Authentication and Provider Rules
SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the entry requirement, not an optimisation. Every message gets checked.
Send 5,000 or more a day to personal Gmail addresses and Google counts you a bulk sender, aggregated across your primary domain.
Marketing and promotional mail then needs one-click unsubscribe; transactional mail is excluded. CAN-SPAM, GDPR and CASL set the legal floor underneath all of it.
List Quality and Complaints
Invalid addresses cause hard bounces, and providers read those as a list you don’t maintain. Complaints are the fastest-moving negative signal you have. Verify before you send, not after the number drops.
Reputation
Domain reputation follows you across every campaign you run. On Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 the sending IP is shared. It isn’t yours to control, so domain reputation is the part you can influence.
Sending Behaviour and Content
Consistency matters more than volume.
Filters read the whole message rather than scanning for a word list. A sudden spike after a quiet period reads like an account takeover.
| Factor | Impact | The signal you will see |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication gaps | Critical | Fails from the first send, whatever the volume |
| Spam complaints | Critical | Above 0.1%. Google enforces at 0.3% |
| List quality | Critical | Bounce rate rising as placement falls |
| Reputation | High | Postmaster amber or red, for the Gmail slice it covers |
| Volume spikes | High | Placement drops after a volume change, not a copy change |
| Content triggers | Medium | Landing in Promotions rather than spam |
Two complaint thresholds circulate and they measure different things. Google asks senders to stay under 0.1%.
The damage is graduated from there rather than switching on at a line. 0.3% is where a bulk sender becomes ineligible for delivery mitigation, and it takes seven consecutive days back under 0.3% to become eligible again.
Why Your Rate Is Dropping
Pair the symptom with the cause before you change anything.
- Rate falling, bounce rate stable → reputation or engagement
- Rate falling, bounce rate rising → list hygiene
- Sudden drop after a good run → a volume spike or a new sending domain
- Gradual decline over weeks → engagement decay
- Drop on one provider only → provider-specific filtering, usually Microsoft
- Fine in testing, poor in production → your seed list isn’t representative
Where reputation looks like the suspect, maintain a healthy sender reputation covers how to check it. Where the mail is landing badly rather than bouncing, emails land in spam covers the filtering side.
How to Check Deliverability Rate
No dashboard reports this number for you. Four sources get you close.
Google Postmaster Tools shows domain reputation and spam rate, but only for personal Gmail recipients. Google says so outright: the data covers gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses, not Workspace business mailboxes.
Microsoft SNDS is an Outlook.com tool, not a Microsoft 365 one, and it reports at the IP level. You need to control the sending IP to register, which rules it out on shared platforms.
A seed-list placement test is the only way to see actual folder placement. TrulyInbox doesn’t offer one. Third-party options include Inbox Radar, GlockApps and MxToolbox for blocklist checks.
Your sending platform reports bounces and delivery. It doesn’t report deliverability, and it never will. The folder your mail lands in isn’t something the receiving server tells the sender.
For a structured pass over everything at once, run an email deliverability audit.
The wider set of email deliverability metrics is worth tracking alongside this one.
How to Improve Deliverability Rate
The previous section told you why the number is falling. This one tells you what to do about it.
Order matters here. The sending domain comes first, because everything below it attaches to that domain and none of it works without one.
Use a Separate Sending Domain
Send outreach from a domain other than the one your invoices go out from. A deliverability problem on a separate domain stays there. On your primary domain it reaches everything, including the mail your customers are waiting for.
Use Professional Email Addresses for Sending
Create real mailboxes on that domain through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Free consumer addresses fail authentication checks that business providers pass by default. Recipients read them as a signal in themselves.
Authenticate Your Email Domains
Publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for the new domain before the first send. Authentication is checked on every message. A domain that fails it starts every campaign behind.
Warm Up Your Email Accounts and Domains
A new domain has no sending history, and providers treat silence as suspicion.
Warming builds that history through real conversations over weeks. Your first campaign shouldn’t also be your first impression.
Use an Opt-in Email List for Marketing Emails
For marketing mail, send to people who asked. Consent is the difference between a complaint rate you can live with and one that gets your domain filtered.
Build an ICP-Relevant List for Cold Emails
Cold outreach isn’t exempt from relevance. A tight list of people the message actually fits produces fewer complaints than a broad one, and complaint rate is what providers watch.
Regularly Clean Your Email List
Remove hard bounces immediately and unengaged addresses on a schedule. Every dead address you keep sending to signals that you aren’t watching your own list.
Avoid Spammy, Salesy and Promotional Language
Content is a smaller factor than most guides suggest, but it isn’t nothing.
Filters weigh the whole message against your reputation. A trusted sender clears content that a new domain won’t.
Keep Your Emails Short and Focused
One idea, one ask. Long messages with several links and heavy formatting look like broadcast mail. That’s what filters are built to catch.
Use a Reputable Sending Software
Shared sending infrastructure means you inherit the reputation of everyone else on it. Ask any provider what happens when another customer on your IP range sends badly.
The warm-up process sits underneath most of this, and it’s the part people skip.
Close
The number to watch is your deliverability rate measured against emails sent, and the line that should trigger action is 75%. If you’re under it, start with the checklist rather than a tool. Most of what breaks this number is configuration rather than software.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
Measured against emails sent, above 85% is great and 80 to 85% is good. Between 75 and 80% is worth watching. Below 75% points at filtering, authentication or reputation.
Published targets vary widely, largely because most guides never say whether bounces are counted in or out. Check that before you compare your score to one you found online.
What Is the Difference Between Deliverability Rate and Delivery Rate?
Delivery rate counts emails the receiving server accepted, wherever they ended up, including spam. Deliverability rate counts only the ones that reached the primary inbox. Your platform reports the first by default, and usually can’t report the second at all.
How Do I Calculate My Email Deliverability Rate?
Divide emails reaching the inbox by emails sent, then multiply by 100. The hard part is the numerator. No standard dashboard reports inbox placement, so you need seed-list testing or provider tools to get a real figure.
Why Is My Deliverability Rate Dropping?
Check bounce rate alongside it. Stable bounces with falling placement point at reputation or engagement. Rising bounces point at list quality. Sudden drops usually follow a volume change or a new sending domain.
Do Deliverability Rates Differ by Email Provider?
Yes, and the gap is wide enough to matter. Gmail and Microsoft filter differently, so one campaign can perform well on one and poorly on the other. Segment by recipient domain before you draw conclusions.
For the wider picture on what deliverability covers, see our guide to email deliverability.
