
Email Deliverability
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to the ability of an email to successfully reach a recipient’s inbox—without being flagged as spam or bounced. It’s a critical metric for email marketing performance, especially in B2B environments where relationship-building and trust hinge on consistent communication. High deliverability means more of your intended audience is actually seeing your messages.
Importance of Email Deliverability in B2B Sales
In B2B sales, email is more than a marketing tool—it’s often the first line of communication with a prospective client. Poor email deliverability can mean missed opportunities, broken funnels, and wasted resources. If your emails are getting filtered into spam or rejected entirely, your outreach strategy falls flat, regardless of how compelling your content may be.
For businesses relying on outbound campaigns, especially those working with email deliverability consultants or sales enablement partners, having strong deliverability can drastically improve engagement rates, lead generation, and pipeline growth.
Best Practices for Email Deliverability
To keep your emails out of spam folders and in front of decision-makers, follow these email deliverability best practices:
- Warm up new domains and IPs: Gradually build up your sending volume to establish a good sender reputation.
- Authenticate your emails: Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to signal to email providers that your messages are legitimate.
- Maintain a clean email list: Regularly remove inactive or invalid addresses to reduce bounce rates.
- Personalize your outreach: Avoid spammy language and generic blasts. Relevance helps with engagement, which in turn improves deliverability.
- Monitor sender reputation: Use tools to track your domain’s health and react quickly to issues.
- Test and optimize: A/B testing subject lines, formatting, and timing can help identify what lands best in your audience’s inboxes.
Many B2B companies benefit from working with email deliverability consultants who specialize in optimizing these technical and strategic elements.
Common Challenges with Email Deliverability
Email deliverability isn’t just about pressing “send.” Many companies face hidden barriers that hurt their performance:
- High bounce rates: Often due to outdated or purchased email lists.
- Spam traps and blacklists: If you’re flagged by major spam databases, reaching inboxes becomes nearly impossible.
- Poor sender reputation: Frequent complaints, low engagement, or bulk sending from new domains can ruin your credibility.
- Technical misconfigurations: Without proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), even legitimate emails may be rejected.
- Inconsistent engagement: Email platforms notice when recipients ignore or delete your messages, which lowers future deliverability.
Understanding these roadblocks—and how to fix them—can significantly improve your outreach effectiveness and ROI.
FAQs: Email Deliverability
How to fix email deliverability?
Start by verifying and cleaning your email list to eliminate bounces. Ensure your domain is authenticated using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Avoid spammy language and use a warm-up strategy for new domains. Consistent engagement with recipients (opens, replies) boosts your sender's reputation. If issues persist, consider working with email deliverability consultants to identify and resolve deeper technical or reputational problems.
What is good email deliverability?
Good email deliverability means your emails consistently reach your audience’s inboxes rather than spam folders. For B2B, a healthy benchmark is a deliverability rate of 95% or higher, with bounce rates below 2%. Strong deliverability ensures that your content is seen, increasing your chances of engagement, lead generation, and conversions.
Why is my email failing to deliver?
Emails may fail to deliver due to invalid addresses (hard bounces), poor sender reputation, blacklisting, or lack of proper email authentication. It could also be related to high spam complaints or using language that triggers filters. Diagnosing the issue often requires checking technical settings and engagement metrics.
Do links hurt email deliverability?
Links can hurt deliverability when overused or poorly formatted—especially if they include shortened URLs, excessive tracking, or suspicious domains. Keep your link usage minimal and relevant. Using HTTPS, custom tracking domains, and clear anchor text can help maintain trust with email providers.
Additional Resources
- Improve email deliverability at scale with AI-powered email strategies.
- Find the best times to send cold emails and boost response rates.
- Use proven tactics to increase email open rates in B2B outreach.
Looking to boost your email deliverability and connect with more qualified leads?
Martal’s team specializes in helping B2B companies get their messages seen by the right people.
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