The Peculiarities of Email Deliverability Audit

Email Deliverability Audit
Jan 4, 2024 Reading time : 7 min

Running an email marketing campaign may be a time-consuming and laborious process that involves taking into account different aspects. Email deliverability is one of such aspects as the efficiency of the campaign is directly related to it. The more messages are delivered, the more openings, clicks, and sales you will acknowledge. If you are willing to monitor your inbox placement, you can take advantage of an email delivery test to make the best of your emails.

To assess the success of the email campaign, it’s crucial to perform an email deliverability audit and follow some useful practices. Email deliverability audit quantifies the messages which land in the inbox and assesses the factors which may reduce deliverability rates. Before performing an audit, use special tools to run an email delivery test. So with its help, you can control whether your emails reach your prospects. You are also supposed to determine potential issues related to email deliverability, such as:

  • Issues related to email infrastructure;
  • Being blacklisted:
  • Bad sender reputation;
  • Spam signals in the content you offer;
  • Bad email authentication.

This piece of writing represents the WARP Method of performing an email deliverability audit. This method involves the analysis of Workflow, Authentication, Reputation, and Performance.

Email Deliverability: Its Definition

Email deliverability constitutes the ability of messages to land in the inboxes of your recipients. It is often measured as the percentage of messages which are accepted by ISPs. It may be controlled by means of email delivery tests.  

When people talk about email deliverability, they often mention messages which they have sent in the past and which have vanished after being sent and before appearing in the recipient’s inbox. However, that is only one facet of deliverability and one should also consider whether a message shows up in the primary box or the spam folder, the social tab, or the promotions tab.

Bear in mind that email deliverability significantly affects the progress of the marketing campaign. The rate of emails that indeed reach the inboxes of your customers is directly correlated with a lot of factors, like sender reputation or email infrastructure. Your messages may get a lot of complaints or be lost in spam folders, therefore the domain or the content may be blocked by email service providers.

Email deliverability is a complex thing that may cause obstacles to marketers. So it’s crucial to perform an email delivery test or turn to experts who represent an email delivery service, and conduct a deliverability audit.

What is the Value of Email Delivery?

To launch a robust email campaign, it’s necessary to be privy to what email delivery is and its importance. The term “email deliverability” is used in modern marketing to determine whether or not the messages make it to the recipients. If your objective is to send out messages to your prospects or subscribers, you expect them to open emails and take certain action afterward. But if your emails fail to appear in the inbox, it’s a matter of concern. You may seem an unreliable sender to your target audience, ISPs, or mail services.

The delivery rate indicates the percentage of messages which have been received by the servers of your customers’ inbox providers. If your delivery rate according to an email delivery test is 98% which is high enough, it means that 20 recipients out of 1000 subscribers don’t see your message. But, there is more. An open rate may be less than a delivery rate. As a result, your emails may not appear in the inbox and this doesn’t contribute to a high open-rate. In such a case we deal with deliverability rate, that is the number of messages which reach the inbox.

It’s essential to make certain that every customer from your list gets the opportunity to open your messages and keep your email deliverability rate in control.  It can be done by means of conducting an email deliverability audit.

Email Deliverability: Factors which Matter

Email deliverability is influenced by various factors. Being blacklisted, email authentication, or sender reputation are considered to be reasons for issues with email deliverability. To keep a high rate, it’s also important to verify the content you offer and the recipients of your mailing.

This article overviews the WARP Method and how to implement it to divide email deliverability into 4 aspects: Workflow, Authentication, Reputation, and Performance. This method will assist in determining factors that may affect deliverability.

Aspects to Be Considered to Improve Email Deliverability

Marketers conduct an email deliverability audit with the purpose to detect aspects that affect email deliverability. A multi-aspect audit takes into account various aspects. Let’s overview the aspects of the WARP method of conducting the audit.

Workflow is the component that affects deliverability the most. You need to convince providers that you are able to send messages. It’s necessary to pay attention to some sending practices:

  • Sending volume and frequency. Send messages coherently while increasing user engagement not to provoke opt-out. Choose the time of your mailing.
  • List segmentation. Arrange your list on the basis of criteria that reflect your audience the most. Create as much personalized content as you can.
  • List hygiene. Maintain your list clean and do away with spam traps and invalid addresses.
  • Broken Links. Always verify the links you provide.

 The better your sending practices are; the more engagement you will get.

Sufficient email authentication is the second aspect to be considered. It is the key to increasing your credibility for the receiving mail server. You need to confirm that you are the sender you claim to be. There are 4 kinds of email authentication: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and BIMI. To verify email authentication records, mail testers are applied.

To obtain a high deliverability rate, one should take into consideration the sender’s reputation. The more users are engaged; the higher reputation is likely to be. To have a good reputation, care about your content and your email list, and give your subscribers the possibility to unsubscribe.  

Measuring your performance is an essential aspect of your deliverability. It allows you to assess how the recipients are engaged with your messages.   

Email Deliverability: The Importance of Testing Tools

Businesses may encounter problems concerning the improper landing of the sent messages. Senders feel frustrated and wonder if there are any possibilities to tackle them. One should understand that it’s easier to prevent such issues than to deal with their consequences.

It is important to follow proper email deliverability practices and take advantage of various testing tools. An email checker is a kind of tool which verifies email addresses. It can state whether the address is real and relevant and whether it has typos. With the help of a spam checker, it’s possible to assess the email itself as it locates spam trigger words that seem unnatural and suspicious. Email delivery testing enables us to determine whether the server has accepted your message or not. If an email bounces, it is regarded as a failed delivery, and you are informed about it. However, you can’t be sure that your message lands in the inbox of the subscriber, so don’t forget to check an email deliverability rate.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing can’t do without emails as they are a great opportunity to present your company, establish contacts with prospects, keep in touch with customers, and, of course, sell your goods and services. To get the maximum out of emails, one shouldn’t ignore email delivery tests and other types of testing tools to audit email deliverability and take control of it.




Senior Writer, Editor, and Copywriter with a total of 7 years of experience in the niche of emails, troubleshooting, and social media. She writes and manages a team of 10 senior writers.