Deliverability
Inbox placement
Where a delivered email actually lands — primary inbox, promotions tab, or spam folder — as opposed to whether it was accepted by the server at all.
Delivered doesn’t mean seen
A delivery rate of 99% only tells you the receiving servers accepted your mail. It says nothing about whether it reached the inbox. An email filtered to spam still counts as delivered, which is why deliverability and delivery are different metrics.
What decides placement
- Sender reputation, for your domain and IP.
- Authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC all passing and aligned.
- How each recipient has engaged with your past mail.
- Content signals, such as link reputation, image-to-text ratio and misleading subject lines.
- Gmail’s tabs, which sort promotional mail into Promotions. That isn’t spam, but it gets less attention.
How to measure it
Watch for signs rather than exact numbers: a sudden drop in opens at one provider, or complaints appearing where there were none. Seed-list testing tools send to test inboxes at each provider and report where mail landed.
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Start freeRelated terms
Full glossaryDeliverability
Sender reputation
A score mailbox providers maintain for a sending domain or IP based on engagement, complaints and bounces, which determines whether your mail reaches the inbox, spam, or gets rejected outright.
Deliverability
Engagement rate
How often recipients open, click, or otherwise interact with your email — a primary signal mailbox providers use to decide future inbox placement.
Deliverability
Spam trap
An email address with no real owner, used by mailbox providers and blocklists to catch senders with poor list hygiene — sending to one is a strong negative signal.