How to calculate the monetary value of email deliverability?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that to calculate ROI of deliverability efforts, one must calculate lost revenue due to undelivered emails (emails not reaching inbox) and compare that to the cost of deliverability solutions.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests calculating revenue per email in the inbox and considering factors like ESP support, consulting costs, and the impact of business practices on deliverability. They also highlight the hidden costs of employing someone versus using a consultant.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares a method used to calculate the value of deliverability by extrapolating the average value of a customer from a domain where they were previously inboxing to the value of customers from domains where they are no longer inboxing.
Email marketer from Validity shares that measuring the impact of deliverability issues on key metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates helps in getting an idea of the impact of deliverability as part of the marketing process.
Marketer from Email Geeks compares a dedicated deliverability person to a car service plan, reducing the risk of issues. They suggest deriving deliverability KPIs from standard KPIs (open rate, click rate, bounce rate, complaint rate) broken down per domain/Mailbox Provider. They also suggest starting by assigning someone to review domain performance and learn the basics of reputation, authentication, and postmaster pages.
Email marketer from GMass Blog responds that while a hard number for the value of deliverability can be hard to determine, there are metrics like placement rate, spam complaint rate, and bounce rate that provide data points on the value and allow you to see improvements by using deliverability tools.
Email marketer from TowerData explains that to calculate value in deliverability, an email marketer needs to be able to determine the source of their deliverability issues. This allows them to apply a cost savings based on not having deliverability problems by fixing the source.
Email marketer from Litmus responds that understanding factors that impact deliverability, such as sending reputation, authentication, and engagement metrics can affect ROI which can be used to measure value of deliverability.
Email marketer from Medium shares that calculating email deliverability ROI is about understanding how deliverability issues affect your email marketing KPIs. They emphasize the importance of tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to quantify the impact of deliverability improvements.
Email marketer from Neil Patel explains that by measuring the value of email marketing, by tracking conversion rates and customer lifetime value, you can see how much value is added through email which would be lost if deliverability were to fail.
Email marketer from EmailToolTester notes that better email deliverability allows for better ROI on email marketing and to measure the value of deliverability improvements, you must be able to see the improvements to your email marketing KPI's.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains that to calculate the ROI of email marketing (including deliverability), you need to determine the revenue generated from email campaigns and subtract the costs associated with those campaigns (including deliverability tools and services).
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks argues that the value of deliverability is equal to the cost of the entire email marketing budget, as the entire email program is wasted if the user doesn't see the email.
Expert from Spamresource explains that you can value deliverability by determining the worth of your domain. "Once a domain loses its good reputation, the sender has to spend additional time and money to repair any damage."
Expert from Word to the Wise responds that you can determine the value of deliverability using detailed data. "The basic formula is (volume * average order value) / recipients = money left on the table if you have deliverability problems."
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC Editor details all SMTP enhanced status codes, which can provide key data points for deliverability specialist when dealing with deliverability issues. These help you to see the types of deliverability problems you have.
Documentation from Microsoft responds that by using sender support, it will give you data that helps you see the impact of deliverability problems on your ability to reach your audience and lets you calculate the revenue impact from deliverability tooling.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that using its service, by monitoring domain and IP reputation, allows senders to identify deliverability issues and estimate potential revenue loss due to emails being marked as spam or blocked.
Documentation from SparkPost shares using detailed deliverability metrics, like delivery rate, bounce rate, and engagement metrics, to assess the performance of email campaigns and quantify the impact of deliverability efforts on revenue generation.
Documentation from Spamhaus provides ways to measure IP and domain reputation, so a sender can see potential reputational issues that effect deliverability, by looking up IP reputation you can see if any deliverability services are needed to resolve issues.