Nearly 1 in 6 marketing emails never reach the inbox! 

As an email marketer, you cannot ignore the impact of poor email deliverability on your business revenue. 

The statistic I shared above at the beginning of this article is from the Email Tool Tester’s study. The same study also found the following: 

The average email deliverability rate in 2024 across the 15 ESPs tested is 83.1%

• This means that 16.9% of all emails never reach the intended recipient’s inbox.
• Approximately 10.5% of emails are in the intended recipient's spam folder.
• 6.4% of emails go missing altogether and are considered “undelivered.”

Have you ever considered how these undelivered emails impact your business? 

Every email that fails to reach the recipient or, worse, ends up in spam represents a lost opportunity. The lower your email deliverability rate, the higher your customer churn and revenue loss.

This article will explore the hidden costs of poor email deliverability and calculate your lost revenue. 

By the end of the article, we'll also share practical tips to help you improve your email campaign’s performance.

The High Costs Of Poor Email Deliverability

The cost of poor email deliverability can vary significantly depending on the industry, company size, and the importance of email marketing to the business. 

However, several studies and reports provide estimates and insights into the potential revenue loss due to emails landing in spam folders. 

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) reported that the average ROI for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. 

Let’s do some hypothetical calculations based on the above. 

Suppose a business sends out 1 million emails expecting an ROI of $42 per $1 spent, translating to $42 million in revenue.

If 20% of these emails (200,000 emails) land in spam, the potential revenue loss could be:

200,000 emails x $42,000,000/1,000,000 emails = $8,400,000

The same principle applies to cold email campaigns: undelivered emails can severely impact your potential sales opportunities.

Let’s see how, with the help of another example: 

If a company sends 100,000 cold emails each month and expects a 5% response rate, that’s 5,000 responses. With a 10% conversion rate, they would get 500 new customers, generating $2.5 million in revenue (assuming each customer is worth $5,000).

However, if 20% of these emails land in spam, only 80,000 emails reach the inbox. With the same response and conversion rates, this leads to 400 new customers, generating only $2 million in revenue. Therefore, the company loses $500,000 in potential revenue due to emails landing in spam.

Even though the numbers are hypothetical, you get the gist of how poor email deliverability can eventually hurt your business revenue and result in losses. 

Additional Impacts of Poor Email Deliverability 

Poor email deliverability can have a range of impacts beyond just direct revenue loss. 

Here are additional ways in which it can negatively affect a business:

1. Brand Reputation

When your emails consistently land in spam, it can severely impact how customers perceive your brand. 

They may start viewing your company as untrustworthy or unprofessional, questioning your reliability. 

This negative perception can erode the trust you’ve built with your audience, making them less likely to engage with your brand in the future. 

Ultimately, poor email deliverability can damage your brand’s reputation, leading to long-term consequences that are difficult to reverse. 

Ensuring your emails reach the inbox is crucial for maintaining a positive image and keeping your customer’s trust intact.

2. Customer Engagement

When your emails end up in spam folders, they’re less likely to be opened, directly reducing overall engagement with your email campaigns. 

Even when some of these emails get opened, their chances of leading to clicks and conversions are significantly lower. 

This decline in engagement can impact the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, making it harder to achieve your campaign goals. 

To keep your audience engaged, it’s essential to ensure your emails are reaching their inboxes, where they’re more likely to be seen and interacted with.

3. Marketing Effectiveness

Poor email deliverability can drastically reduce the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, leading to a lower return on investment (ROI). 

When emails don’t reach your audience’s inbox, the time and money you’ve spent creating and sending them are wasted. 

This inefficiency can make it harder to justify your marketing spend and achieve the desired outcomes from your campaigns. 

Improving your email deliverability is crucial to maximizing your ROI. This ensures that your messages reach your audience and drive the desired results.

4. Operational Inefficiencies

When important emails like confirmations or updates land in spam, customers may miss them and contact your support team for assistance. 

This increase in support inquiries can drive up operational costs as your team spends more time resolving issues that could have been avoided. 

Additionally, your team might need to manually follow up with customers to ensure they receive critical information, which is both time-consuming and inefficient. 

Improving email deliverability can help you avoid these operational headaches and keep your processes running smoothly.

5. Compliance and Legal Issues

Poor email deliverability might indicate that your emails are not compliant with regulations like GDPR or CAN-SPAM, putting your business at risk of fines or legal action. 

Additionally, when customers don’t receive important communications, they may question the security of their data, leading to concerns about privacy. 

This can erode trust and potentially expose your company to further legal risks. To avoid these issues, it’s essential to ensure that your emails comply with all relevant regulations and reach your audience as intended.

6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

When your emails fail to reach customers, it can lead to missed renewal reminders or subscription updates, reducing customer retention rates. 

This directly impacts the customer lifetime value (CLTV), as loyal customers are crucial to your long-term revenue. 

Moreover, if emails about new products or upgrades don’t reach your existing customers, you lose valuable upsell and cross-sell opportunities. 

Ensure your emails are delivered to the inbox to maintain and increase CLTV. This will keep your customers informed and engaged with your offerings.

7. Competitive Advantage

If your email deliverability is poor, competitors with better deliverability rates can easily capture more market share. 

They can effectively engage with their audience while your messages go unseen, giving them an edge in the marketplace. 

Additionally, if your customers consistently miss critical communications because emails land in spam, they might switch to a competitor who can reliably keep them informed. 

To maintain your competitive advantage, it’s essential to prioritize email deliverability and ensure your messages reach your audience.

How To Improve Email Deliverability 

Though email deliverability may seem challenging, you can take steps to improve it. 

Let’s talk about these tips in detail below:

1. Maintain a Clean Email List

Maintaining a clean email list is essential for improving email deliverability and inbox placement.

Regularly removing inactive subscribers and reducing bounce rates helps keep your list healthy. 

Additionally, never purchase a lead list. Building one from scratch using tools like Clay or Apollo or via LinkedIn research is always better. 

Once you have a lead list, segment it based on engagement levels. This allows you to tailor content accordingly, leading to higher engagement rates and better deliverability.

2. Authenticate Your Emails

Authenticating your emails is critical in ensuring they reach your recipients' inboxes rather than getting flagged as spam. 

By setting up SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) protocols, you establish a robust defense against email spoofing and phishing attempts. 

SPF verifies that your emails are being sent from authorized servers, while DKIM adds a digital signature to ensure they haven’t been tampered with during transit. 

DMARC ties everything together, allowing you to specify how email providers should handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.

In addition to these technical measures, using a consistent and recognizable sender name is equally important. When recipients see a familiar name in their inbox, they’re more likely to trust and engage with the email.

3. Monitor and Improve Email Content

Monitoring and improving your email content is critical to ensuring your messages reach the inbox and resonate with your audience. 

To start, be mindful of common spam triggers. Avoid using excessive punctuation, all caps, or overly aggressive language like "free" or "buy now." 

These elements can easily flag your emails as spam, causing them to be filtered out before they can be seen. 

Instead, focus on crafting clear, concise messages that deliver value without using gimmicks.

Personalization is another powerful tactic. By addressing recipients by their names and tailoring content to their specific interests or needs, you significantly increase the likelihood that they’ll engage with your emails. 

4. Test and Optimize Send Times

Experiment with different send times through A/B testing to uncover when your audience is most likely to engage with your content. 

Once you’ve gathered data from these tests, closely monitor the engagement metrics. 

Open rates will clearly indicate when your recipients are most likely to check their emails, while click-through rates will show when they’re most inclined to take action. 

You can pinpoint the optimal times to send your campaigns by identifying patterns in these metrics.

Optimizing your send times based on this data ensures that your emails land in your recipients' inboxes at the most opportune moments. 

This increases the likelihood that your emails will be seen, read, and acted upon, ultimately leading to better performance for your email marketing efforts.

5. Engage with Your Subscribers

Actively engaging with your subscribers is crucial in boosting email deliverability and fostering long-term relationships. 

One effective way to do this is by encouraging subscribers to whitelist your email address. 

By adding your address to their contact list or address book, they signal to their email provider that your messages are trusted and should be delivered directly to their inbox, not the spam folder. 

This simple step can significantly enhance your emails' chances of being seen and read.

6. Monitor Email Performance

Use email analytics to gain valuable insights into how your emails perform, helping you identify any issues or areas needing improvement. 

Key email metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates clearly show how well your audience is engaging with your content. If these metrics are lower than expected, it may signal that your subject lines, content, or timing need adjustment.

One critical metric to keep an eye on is your bounce rate. 

A high bounce rate indicates that many of your emails are not reaching their intended recipients, possibly due to problems with your email list or the content itself. 

Hard bounces, where emails fail to deliver due to invalid addresses, suggest it’s time to clean up your list. 

Soft bounces, caused by temporary issues like a full inbox, might require monitoring to ensure they don’t persist. 

Addressing these issues promptly can improve your overall deliverability, ensuring your emails reach your audience and perform as intended.

Winding-Up

You can’t afford to overlook the hidden costs of poor email deliverability. 

Each email that fails to reach its destination isn't just a missed chance; it's a setback to your marketing efforts and a drain on resources. 

Investing in effective email deliverability isn’t just about ensuring your messages land in the inbox—it's about safeguarding your brand, maximizing your marketing ROI, and building lasting relationships with your audience. 

Don’t let hidden costs undermine your success; prioritize your email strategy with Smartlead. 

To learn more about email deliverability and discover strategies to enhance it, explore the resources at Smartlead University. Just log into your Smartlead account and click on the ‘Smartlead University’ tab in the bottom left corner.

If you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial today and start ensuring your emails reach the inbox, boosting your deliverability and driving your business forward.

FAQs

1. What is email deliverability? 

Email deliverability refers to the ability of your emails to successfully reach the recipients' inboxes rather than being marked as spam or undelivered. It involves factors like email authentication, sender reputation, and content quality.

2. How can I know if I have poor email deliverability? 

You can identify poor email deliverability by monitoring key metrics such as bounce rates, open rates, and spam complaints. High bounce rates or low open rates often indicate deliverability issues. Additionally, email deliverability tools and analytics can provide insights into whether your emails are landing in spam folders.

3. Why is email deliverability important in cold emailing? 

Email deliverability is crucial in cold emailing because it determines whether your messages reach potential leads. Poor deliverability can result in your emails ending up in spam folders or not being delivered at all, reducing your chances of engaging with prospects and achieving successful conversions.

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