Glossary · Email & deliverability · Last updated October 31, 2026
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than bouncing or landing in spam.
Also called: Inbox placement, Deliverability.
Deliverability has two layers. Delivery is whether the receiving server accepts the message at all; bounces are the failures. Inbox placement is where an accepted message ends up: inbox, promotions, or spam. Most dashboards only show the first.
Mailbox providers decide placement from your sender reputation, authentication, list quality and how recipients respond. Their published requirements set the floor: Google and Yahoo require bulk senders to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, keep spam complaints below 0.3%, and support one-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058). Outlook.com requires SPF, DKIM and DMARC for domains sending more than 5,000 emails a day.
For cold email to local businesses, deliverability is mostly decided before you hit send: a separate, authenticated, warmed-up domain; a list of verified addresses with catch-all kept separate; small daily volumes per mailbox; and messages relevant enough that people don't report them.
Common mistakes are judging deliverability by open rates (privacy features make them unreliable), sending everything from one mailbox, and treating a bounce problem as a copywriting problem.
Example
Two agencies send the same message. One uses a verified list from a warmed, authenticated domain and gets replies; the other uses a bought list from a new domain, bounces at 9%, and its later mail lands in spam.
Sources
Related terms
- Sender reputationSender reputation is the trust mailbox providers place in your sending domain and IP, built from complaints, bounces, authentication and engagement.
- Bounce rateBounce rate is the percentage of sent emails that were returned as undeliverable; for cold email, under 2% is a sensible target.
- SPFSPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS record that lists which servers are allowed to send email for a domain, so receivers can spot forgeries.
- DKIMDKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a cryptographic signature added to email so receivers can verify which domain sent it and that it wasn't altered.
- DMARCDMARC is a DNS policy that tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM alignment for your domain, and where to send reports.
Further reading
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