Deliverability vs inbox placement
Definition
Deliverability is whether an email was accepted by the receiving mail server. Inbox placement is whether it landed in the inbox rather than the spam folder. An email can be delivered and still never be seen.
Deliverability is whether an email was accepted by the receiving mail server. Inbox placement is whether it landed in the inbox rather than the spam folder. An email can be delivered and still never be seen.
Most tools report deliverability, and most people read it as inbox placement. They're different numbers. The gap between them is where cold email programs quietly die.
A 98 percent delivery rate means 98 percent of emails weren't bounced. It says nothing about where they went after the server accepted them. Gmail and Microsoft accept almost everything and then decide, based on domain reputation, authentication, content, and engagement, whether to put it in the inbox, promotions, or spam. A program can show 98 percent delivered and 40 percent inbox placement, and the report will look fine.
An example
An agency's dashboard shows 97 percent deliverability on a cold email program. The client's reply rate has fallen by half over three weeks. An inbox placement test, sending to seeded mailboxes at Google and Microsoft and checking where the email lands, shows 35 percent of Microsoft recipients are getting it in junk. The domain's reputation with Microsoft dropped after a bad list went out. Deliverability never moved.
How to measure placement
Seed tests against real mailboxes at each provider, run weekly per sending domain. Google Postmaster Tools for domain reputation at Gmail. And the reply rate. That's the number that drops first when placement goes wrong.
Related terms
Email deliverability · Domain reputation · Spam complaint rate · Email warmup
If you want this run for you, see our cold email agency.
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