Key Email Deliverability Metrics to Monitor
Understanding Email Deliverability Metrics
Tracking email deliverability metrics helps you gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns and maintain a positive sender reputation. Below are the key metrics you should monitor, along with benchmarks indicating healthy performance, warning signs, and red flags.
Delivered Rate
The delivered rate represents the percentage of emails that successfully reached the recipient's mail server. This is the foundation of your email performance.
- Healthy: 98% or higher
- Warning: Around 97–98%
- Red Flag: Below 97%
A low delivered rate often indicates issues with sender reputation, authentication, or list quality. It may also suggest that emails are landing in spam or promotions folders.
Opened Rate
The opened rate measures how many recipients opened your email. Note that some email clients, like Apple Mail with iOS 15+, may trigger false opens.
- Healthy: 40–60% or higher
- Average: 16–26%
- Red Flag: Below 15%
Focus on elements recipients see before opening: sender name, email address, subject line, and preview text. Combine open rate with clicks and replies for a more accurate assessment.
Clicked Rate
The clicked rate tracks how many recipients clicked on links within your email, especially your call-to-action (CTA).
- Healthy: Above 10%
- Average: 7–9%
- Red Flag: Below 5%
Ensure your CTA is clear, actionable, and placed strategically within the email. Avoid multiple competing clickable elements to keep the focus on your primary goal.
Replied Rate
The replied rate measures how many recipients responded to your email, indicating deeper engagement.
- Healthy: 30% or higher
- Average: 15–25%
- Red Flag: Below 10%
Encourage replies with low-friction questions or valuable incentives. Keep the reply CTA straightforward and avoid distracting links.
Complaint Rate
The complaint rate reflects how many recipients marked your email as spam.
- Healthy: As close to 0.00% as possible
- AUP Threshold: 0.05% (approximately 1 complaint per 2,000 emails)
- Red Flag: At or above 0.04%
High complaint rates can damage your sender reputation and lead to domain or account issues. Always provide easy opt-out options to reduce complaints.
Bounced Rate (Hard)
Hard bounces occur when emails cannot be delivered due to invalid or inactive addresses.
- Healthy: As low as possible
- Red Flag: Any significant number of hard bounces
Regularly clean your email list to minimize hard bounces and maintain list hygiene.
Bounced Rate (Soft)
Soft bounces are temporary delivery failures, such as a full inbox or server issues. The system automatically retries sending these emails.
Monitor soft bounces to identify temporary issues, but they are less critical than hard bounces.
Unsubscribed Rate
This metric tracks how many recipients opted out of your emails. Unsubscribes are preferable to complaints, as they do not harm your reputation.
Ensure unsubscribe options are clear and easy to access.
Suppressions
Suppressions occur when emails are not sent to addresses that have previously bounced, complained, or unsubscribed. This helps protect your sender reputation.
Review suppression lists periodically to maintain list quality.
Summary
Monitoring these metrics helps you optimize email campaigns and maintain a healthy sender reputation. Focus on improving delivered, opened, clicked, and replied rates while minimizing complaints and bounces. Regularly review your performance and adjust strategies accordingly.