Email deliverability
Email deliverability is whether your emails reach the recipient's inbox instead of the spam folder or being blocked. It depends on sender reputation, authentication, content, and sending behavior.
A message can be sent successfully and still never be seen if it lands in spam. Deliverability describes how often your email reaches the inbox, and it is shaped by your sending domain's reputation, whether your domain is properly authenticated, the quality of your list, and how recipients react.
Good habits include authenticating your sending domain, keeping lists clean to avoid bounces, sending relevant messages, making it easy to opt out, and increasing volume gradually. Complaints and repeated bounces harm reputation, which then affects every message you send from that domain.
For outreach, deliverability is a gate on every other metric: a low reply rate may reflect messages that never arrived. Monitor bounces and spam complaints, and keep cold email volume conservative.
Common questions
Why do emails go to spam?
Common causes are poor sender reputation, missing authentication, bad lists, irrelevant content, and recipients marking messages as spam.
Does sending less email help deliverability?
Sending steadily and conservatively, to relevant and verified addresses, generally protects reputation better than sudden spikes.
Related terms
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