What KPIs should I use to monitor email deliverability trends?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from StackOverflow explains that while unsubscribes are normal, a sudden spike can indicate deliverability problems, such as sending to unengaged or outdated lists.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that list hygiene, including tracking hard bounces and unengaged subscribers, is crucial for maintaining deliverability and preventing spam complaints.
Email marketer from Gmass explains that regularly checking your sending IP and domain against various blocklists is essential for identifying and resolving deliverability issues that could prevent emails from reaching inboxes.
Email marketer from Email Geeks highlights the importance of trending email metrics, revenue, and other KPIs, as well as the importance of using postmaster tools and sender reputation tools to check deliverability.
Email marketer from Litmus explains that tracking engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates across different devices and email clients provides valuable insights into subscriber behavior and campaign performance.
Email marketer from Validity shares that placement rate, which measures the percentage of emails that reach the inbox versus the spam folder, is a key indicator of deliverability success.
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that monitoring spam complaints and feedback loops is critical for maintaining a positive sender reputation. High complaint rates can lead to deliverability issues and blacklisting.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that monitoring complaint rates is critical for maintaining a positive sending reputation. Using feedback loops helps to promptly handle complaints and resolve deliverability issues.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that sender reputation is vital and should be monitored through bounce rates, spam complaints, and blocklist status. Engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates offer insights into subscriber interaction and campaign effectiveness.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that while not direct, conversion rates from email campaigns can indirectly indicate deliverability health. If emails aren't reaching inboxes, conversions will suffer.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Spamresource.com explains the importance of engagement metrics like opens and clicks as indicators of deliverability, noting that sustained low engagement can lead to emails being filtered as spam. They advise monitoring these metrics closely to maintain a healthy sender reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that the ability to graph metrics over time, broken down by recipient ISP (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft), can be good enough for B2C.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the changes from Apple do not impact the efficacy of looking at trends.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that complaint rates are a critical metric for monitoring email deliverability trends, as high complaint rates directly impact sender reputation and can lead to deliverability issues. They recommend actively monitoring and addressing complaints to maintain a healthy sending reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks explains the importance of graphing everything over time and following trends, as relying on one-day numbers is unreliable. She also advises to keep track of bounce logs and their reasons, as spam filters provide reasons and remediation pathways.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that domain and IP reputation metrics are crucial for understanding how Gmail views your sending practices. Monitoring these metrics can help identify and resolve deliverability issues.
Documentation from MessageBird, formerly SparkPost, explains that tracking the implementation and validation of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records is essential for authenticating emails and improving deliverability.
Documentation from Microsoft SNDS explains that monitoring IP reputation and spam trap hits can help identify deliverability issues and maintain a positive sending reputation with Outlook.com and Hotmail.
Documentation from SendGrid explains that tracking bounce rates is essential for identifying deliverability issues. High bounce rates can indicate problems with email list hygiene or sender reputation.
Documentation from IETF explains that SMTP error codes provide detailed information about delivery failures. Analyzing these codes can help diagnose deliverability issues.