RESEARCH REPORT

State of email deliverability 2023

Industry benchmarks and expert advice on inbox placement
 Table of contents

The journey to the inbox..................................................................................................3

Key takeaways from the survey .........................................................................................................4

1. Email deliverability basics...............................................................................................7

Email infrastructure and deliverability................................................................................................9
Transactional vs marketing emails................................................................................................. 12
Delivery rate benchmarks.................................................................................................................. 14

2. Deliverability challenges and measurement................................................................... 17

Top email deliverability challenges.................................................................................................. 17
Measuring email deliverability.......................................................................................................... 18
Exploring the inbox placement rate................................................................................................. 22
What’s your reputation?..................................................................................................................... 24

3. Blocklisting and its impact.............................................................................................31

4. Email authentication......................................................................................................38
Email authentication essentials....................................................................................................... 38
SPF and DKIM usage......................................................................................................................... 39
DMARC implementation.................................................................................................................... 41
DMARC policy options....................................................................................................................... 42
BIMI adoption ..................................................................................................................................... 45

5. List building and hygiene ..............................................................................................50

Bad list building habits ...................................................................................................................... 50
Good list building habits ................................................................................................................... 52
List hygiene processes ..................................................................................................................... 56

6. Best practices for better deliverability ........................................................................... 62

7. Deliverability: Why IT and marketing need to team up.................................................... 66

How we can help............................................................................................................67

About this survey ..........................................................................................................68

2
State of email deliverability 2023 | Introduction: The journey to the inbox

INTRODUCTION

The journey to the inbox

To many people, it seems so simple. Hit send and an email shows up in the inboxes of intended recipients.
The truth is, there’s a lot that happens before and after an email reaches its final destination.

Email deliverability can be a misunderstood topic. That’s partly because there are so many factors involved
in determining where emails end up. Every sender wants to avoid the spam folder as much as possible, but
you also have to worry about getting blocklisted or bad actors spoofing your brand.

At Mailgun by Sinch, we’re lucky to have teams of people who are experts on the ins and outs of email deliver-
ability. We also have access to thousands of senders around the world, including customers from our sister
brands, Mailjet by Sinch and Email on Acid by Sinch.

In the first half of 2023, more than 1900 senders took part in a survey so we could learn more about their
understanding of what it takes to make it to the inbox and how they approach email deliverability. We also
asked our in-house deliverability experts to offer insights on the survey results and advice based on their
experience.

To sum things up, what you don’t know about deliverability could hurt you. Not making it to the inbox can
have significant effects on everything from business operations to brand reputation. But when you invest
in improving and maintaining good email deliverability, you’re going to see a positive return.

“Email is a channel that is often celebrated for its high return on

investment. However, that ROI decreases as email deliverability
issues increase. Email is a great source for revenue generation,
but when messages end up in spam, people are extremely
unlikely to take action. It doesn’t matter how cost-effective email
is. If your campaigns aren’t reaching people, your ROI is zero.”

Kate Nowrouzi, VP, Deliverability and Product Strategy, Mailgun by Sinch

3
State of email deliverability 2023 | Introduction: The journey to the inbox

Key takeaways from the survey

When we reviewed the survey results and looked at the big picture, a few themes emerged:

1. A lack of email deliverability knowledge is common.

2. Senders are missing major opportunities to improve deliverability.

3. Getting into the inbox supports a better customer experience.

Here’s more on these three key takeaways:

Lack of email deliverability knowledge

While more than 1900 senders from around the world completed the survey, many started answering our
questions and didn’t finish. We heard from people who told us they abandoned the process because they
simply didn’t know enough to answer everything. That lack of knowledge led to lots of uncertainty.

Deliverability experts are a rare breed. Just 4% of survey participants claimed to hold the job title of Email
Deliverability Specialist. That’s one reason why we offered an Unsure option with certain technical survey
questions. The option was often selected around 25% of the time:

• More than 27% of senders are unsure of their delivery rate for marketing emails.

• Another 27% could not describe their organization’s email sending infrastructure.

• Among senders using DMARC for email authentication, 40% were unsure of their policy.

• 24.5% of senders in the survey were unsure if they’d been blocklisted in the last two years.

The uncertainty isn’t exactly surprising given the variety of businesses, email program complexity, and send
volumes. Still, all these things are important to know, especially if you place importance on getting to the
inbox.

Missed opportunities for businesses

The failure to follow certain email deliverability best practices was another sign of the need for more knowl-
edge. These are major missed opportunities that could greatly improve the chances of landing in the inbox:

• 38.7% of senders say they Rarely or Never practice email list hygiene.

• Another 38% admitted they are Not monitoring sender reputation.

• More than 50% of senders are not yet automating the list-cleaning process with helpful tools.

• Nearly 60% said they have not implemented a sunset policy to identify and properly manage non-en-
gaged contacts.

Throughout this report, we’ll explain why these factors and others are important best practices that lead to a
healthy email program.

4
State of email deliverability 2023 | Introduction: The journey to the inbox

Supporting the customer experience

There is good news for those who focus on improving email deliverability. Senders who prioritize inbox place-
ment say it’s about more than getting a higher percentage of messages delivered. Better email deliverabil-
ity supports a better customer experience. And those who’ve had problems with deliverability learned the
hard way.

• 40% of senders who prioritize deliverability say the biggest benefit is Improved customer satisfaction.

• Among senders who’ve been blocklisted, Delays for important messages was the biggest negative
impact at 33.5%.

• Another 22% said the biggest impact of getting blocklisted was Dissatisfied customers.

From password resets to special promotions, valuable information is delivered via the email channel every
day. Many of your contacts are expecting and anticipating the arrival of those messages. When they get
delayed, land in spam, or never show up, it erodes trust, causes frustration, and could easily reduce your
revenue.

That’s why focusing on deliverability is an excellent way to increase your return on investment (ROI) from
the email channel. In fact, a 2023 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study on Mailgun by Sinch
found that a composite organization would see a 264% ROI after just three years. That’s thanks in no small
part to hundreds of thousands of dollars in incremental revenue from improved deliverability.

Focusing on deliverability is an excellent way to increase your return on investment (ROI) from
the email channel.

What do senders really know about deliverability?

We asked the senders who took our survey to rate their knowledge of email deliverability and their propensity
to carry out practices that support inbox placement. Results show that close to half of respondents feel at
least Somewhat confident in their abilities while less than 20% admit to lacking confidence around the topic.

5
State of email deliverability 2023 | Introduction: The journey to the inbox

15.7+39.8+25.413.35.8F
How confident are you in your knowledge of email deliverability
and implementing strategies that support it?
Very unconfident
5.8% Very confident
15.7%
Somewhat unconfident
13.3%

Neutral
25.4%
Somewhat confident
39.8%

But it’s possible that some of that confidence is overstated, and other results in our “State of email deliverabil-
ity” report reflect that possibility. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s easy to feel like you’ve got
all the knowledge you need. So, let’s take a closer look at how email senders around the world are address-
ing deliverability. Watch for our deliverability experts to clear up confusion and add advice along the way.

“I know people spend a lot of time strategizing and building

the email itself. When they send it out, if it goes to the spam
folder for half their list, they’re probably left wondering why. I
think it’s unfortunate, but it’s the result of not understanding
all the things that could impact email deliverability.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

6
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

PA R T 1

Email deliverability basics

A common misconception is that email deliverability is simply about getting messages delivered. But it’s
much broader than that. The true definition of email deliverability involves following a set of practices, pro-
cesses, and protocols that increase the likelihood of messages getting delivered to subscribers’ inboxes.

“Delivered to subscribers’ inboxes” is the key phrase here. When an email is delivered, it means the receiving
mail server has accepted the message. What happens next is still up in the air. Mailbox providers filter deliv-
ered mail, sending some to the inbox and some to spam. Messages may also land in other folders that are
part of the main inbox, including promotions, updates, and social media.

For most legitimate email senders, reaching the inbox and avoiding the junk folder is a big deal. We asked
survey participants to rate how much of a priority deliverability is to their companies. It’s clear that inbox place-
ment is an important business objective.

How much of a priority is achieving high email deliverability to your company?

40%
36.2%

30%
Percent of respondents

20%
15.9%
13.6%
11.7%

10%
8.5%

3.6%
1.0% 1.2% 1.5% 1.7%
0.7%
0%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Lower priority Higher priority

7
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

The question is, how is the goal of high deliverability achieved, and what does it look like? First, realize that
many things can affect your ability to land in the inbox:

• Email sending infrastructure decisions

• Levels of engagement from subscribers

• Email authentication protocols

• List building and list hygiene practices

• Unsubscribes and spam complaints

• Sudden changes in send volume

• New sending IPs or domains

• Your reputation with major mailbox providers

• Changes in mailbox provider spam filtering technology

• And more...

Some of these factors are highly technical and others are connected to email marketing strategy. Most are in
your control, but sometimes deliverability issues aren’t even your fault.

So, what’s the payoff for investing time and resources into improving email deliverability? We asked send-
ers who rated the importance of deliverability at 60 or higher to choose the biggest benefit to their business.

Senders selected the benefit of Improved customer satisfaction (40.1%) most often. That more than doubled
the next most popular option, Increased revenue from email (18.6%). Rounding out the top three benefits of
prioritizing email deliverability was Reaching more leads and prospects (13.3%).

What is the biggest business benefit your company experiences

from prioritizing and improving email deliverability?

Improved customer satisfaction 40%

Increased revenue from email 18.6%

Reaching more leads and prospects 13.3%

Higher email engagement metrics 9.7%

Delivering more messages to the inbox 8.8%

Better protection of brand reputation 6.6%

Other 3.0%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

8
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

Remember that there are different types of emails. People expect to receive transactional emails. They usu-
ally sign up to receive marketing emails from brands they trust, and they hate getting unsolicited spam
emails.

If an important transactional email never shows up, that could certainly create a dissatisfied customer. Yet
even a missing marketing email can be disappointing. Imagine missing a promo code from your favorite
online store or that a newsletter you look forward to reading gets lost in the spam folder.

“With transactional messages, recipients obviously do not

want to wait for a password reset email, or for an MFA/2FA
email. Or worse, for those emails to not arrive at all. They
would expect those specific emails to come to their mailboxes
almost instantly. Any transactional email that is delayed, or not
delivered at all, could be quite problematic to your end-users.”

Alexandre Zibrick, Compliance and Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

Email infrastructure and deliverability

Let’s take a step back to the beginning of an email’s journey to the inbox. Emails pass through a variety of serv-
ers, mail transfer agents (MTAs), filters, and rendering engines before recipients ever look at the message.

Bulk email gets sent from a particular domain and IP address. The IP address may be shared with other send-
ers, or it could be a dedicated IP for a specific sender. There are senders who have their own email servers on
premises, those who use cloud-based platforms, and those with a hybrid solution for email sending.

Here’s a breakdown of email infrastructure among the senders who took our survey. As you can see, the two
cloud-based options are a bit more common than others, with 25% sending from the cloud on a shared IP and
19.5% using a dedicated IP. Only 6% have an On-premises MTA and 14.6% use a Hybrid solution.

9
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

25+19.5+614.67.926F
What best describes your email sending infrastructure?

Cloud-based with shared IP

Unsure
25.0%
27.0%

Open-source solution
7.9%
Cloud-based with dedicated IP
19.5%
Hybrid solution
14.6% On-premises MTA
6.0%

Many organizations have launched large-scale digital transformation projects in which they’ve migrated to
the cloud. Email sending infrastructure (as well as secure data storage) is one of the biggest opportunities for
taking advantage of what the cloud has to offer.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of a cloud-based email infrastructure is what you don’t have to do. Putting
email infrastructure in the cloud takes a lot off your plate, including many upfront expenditures and ongoing
pressures involving upgrades, security, and compliance. Check out the comparison table for more on cloud
vs on-premises email infrastructure:

Main­char­acteristics of on-p­remise Main­char­acteristics of cloud-based

Larg­e upfr­ont cost­ Pay-­as-you-go subs­cription

Hard­ware/software inst­allation and lice­nsing No inst­allation, fast­ onbo­arding

Full­ cont­rol over­ your­ infr­astructure Thir­d-party host­ing

Resp­onsible for all comp­liance Clou­d-provider resp­onsible for comp­liance

Larg­er ongo­ing cost­s (maintenance,

Not resp­onsible for serv­er main­tenance
on-site staf­f, etc.­)

10
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

Main­char­acteristics of on-p­remise Main­char­acteristics of cloud-based

Prov­ider resp­onsible for meet­

Resp­onsible for phys­ical and cybe­r secu­rity
ing secu­rity stan­dards

Prov­iders offe­r dedi­cated IT staff,

Supp­ort your­ own infr­astructure
supp­ort, and addi­tional serv­ices

Acce­ss on a larg­e numb­er of devi­ces,

Limi­ted to the devi­ces you use for inst­allation supp­orts inte­gration with­ othe­r tool­s, and
secu­rities like­ sin­gle-sign on (SSO­)

Choosing cloud-based email infrastructure reduces a sender’s concerns, obligations, and overhead costs. In
the end, that contributes to increased email ROI.

WEBINAR
Everything you need to know about dedicated IPs

Find out more about email infrastructure when you

watch a webinar recording featuring Mailgun by Sinch
experts. They answer all the toughest questions
about using a dedicated IP for email sending.

Watch Now

11
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics
“When you pick a cloud-based email service provider like
Mailgun by Sinch, we do all of it for you. You don’t even have to
think about it. You don’t have to worry about security updates,
vulnerability patching, or hardware updates. We handle all of
that, and it reduces costs associated with email in the long run.”

Natalie Hays, Product Marketing Manager, Mailgun by Sinch

Transactional vs marketing emails

A smart email infrastructure decision for many senders with higher volumes is the separation of transactional
and commercial messages on different IP addresses or subdomains. Better deliverability is the reason why.

Transactional messages are not bulk email. Password resets, two-factor authentication, invoices, shipping
updates... these types of time-sensitive, automated messages are sent to individuals – not a huge list of con-
tacts. But grouping transactional emails with mass marketing messages could cause deliverability problems.

Mailbox providers are monitoring your sending practices. You don’t want them to get confused and lump
transactional emails with marketing messages. That’s why more than 42% of senders in our survey use sep-
arate subdomains or sending IPs for transactional and marketing emails. However, another 40% of senders
say they are not separating transactional communication from email marketing messages.

42.1+17.5+40.4F
Are you using separate domains or sending IP addresses
for transactional emails and marketing emails?

No
40.4%
Yes
42.1%

Unsure
17.5%

12
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

The reason for the separation is straightforward. Marketing emails are more likely to be marked as spam, have
a higher number of unsubscribes, and have lower engagement rates. As a result, mailbox providers are also
more likely to filter marketing emails into junk/spam.

Separating transactional emails from marketing sends a clear message to mailbox providers that your trans-
actional communications are to be treated differently.

The practice of separating these two types of email communication is more common among high-vol-
ume senders. While more than 60% of senders with a volume of more than 100,000 emails per month are
isolating marketing email traffic from transactional, far fewer senders with a volume below 100,000 emails
per month are doing the same.

Monthly send volume comparison:

Are you using separate domains or sending IP addresses
for transactional emails and marketing emails?

64.5%

More than 1 million emails 27.6%

7.9%

60.6%

100,000 to 1 million emails 27.0%

12.4%

47.3%

50,000 to 99,999 emails 38.2%

14.5%

34.5%

Fewer than 50,000 emails 45.0%

20.4%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Yes No Unsure

There are also situations in which senders separate emails even further. For example, high-volume senders
with more complex email programs may have different subdomains for abandoned cart emails, win-back
campaigns, or unsolicited cold emails from sales. This strategy ensures you have better control over deliv-
erability for your most important messages and campaigns.

13
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

“It’s a smart move to separate mail streams. If you have cold

sales emails going out from the same sending domain as
your marketing campaigns, that’s not a good idea. I don’t
recommend sending unsolicited emails at all, but I know it
happens. Cold sales emails have a bad reputation, and they’ll
get marked as spam. You don’t want any chance of that
bleeding over to your transactional or marketing messages.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

Delivery rate benchmarks

The delivery rate is the metric most often associated with email deliverability. While it doesn’t tell the entire
story, it does let a sender know the percentage of emails that are received and accepted by mailbox providers.
One of the biggest misconceptions among senders is that email deliverability is all about the delivery rate.

It’s important to understand that the delivery rate metric only measures the number of emails that mailbox
providers accept, not where emails ultimately end up. The simple equation for the delivery rate percentage is:

(# of messages delivered ÷ # of messages sent) X 100

This excludes messages that bounce because of an invalid email address or a full mailbox, for example. It
also excludes messages that mailbox providers reject or block for any reason. So, to be clear... if emails are
landing in spam, they still count toward the delivery rate.

For this report, we asked senders to select from a range of delivery rates for both transactional and market-
ing emails. Just over 47% of respondents reported a delivery rate of 95% or more for transactional emails.
However, a combined 13.4% reported delivery rates below 85% for transactional messages.

14
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

47.1+19.3+7.55.920.2F
What is your organization’s delivery rate for transactional emails?

Unsure
20.2%

Less than 75%

5.9% 95% or more
47.1%
75% to 84%
7.5%

85% to 94%
19.3%

A delivery rate below 85% means 15% or more of transactional messages never get delivered at all. If more
than 1 out of 10 transactional messages never arrive, that could definitely be an issue. In fact, separate
research from Mailjet by Sinch suggests 93% of consumers would consider switching to a rival brand after
a bad experience with transactional emails.

Reported delivery rates for marketing emails are noticeably lower than transactional emails. The survey
found that only around 27% of respondents have a delivery rate of 95% or higher for marketing emails.
More than 21% of senders reported delivery rates below 85% for marketing emails. These findings further sup-
port the strategy of separating transactional and marketing messages for deliverability purposes. When sent
from the same IP or domain, the poorer reputation of marketing emails may carry over to your transactional
communications, which can drag down their deliverability.

15
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 1: Email deliverability basics

27+24.2+10.111.227.5F
What is your organization’s delivery rate for commercial/marketing emails?

95% or more
Unsure
27.0%
27.5%

Less than 75%

11.2%
85% to 94%
24.2%
75% to 84%
10.1%

Lower delivery rates are a sign of deliverability issues such as emails getting blocked or having lots of invalid
contacts on your list that are bouncing because they are fake, non-existent, or had a typo in the email address.
Mailgun experts say that even a 95% delivery rate for transactional messages is reason enough to take a
closer look at the situation.

“For pure transactional email traffic, I would expect a 99%

delivery rate and never much below that. For marketing emails,
I think you should always aim for at least 95%. If you aren’t
achieving that, you need to take a closer look at your program
and practices right away. If I were to see a transactional
delivery rate below 75%, I would be very concerned.”

Alexandre Zibrick, Compliance and Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

16
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

PA R T 2

Deliverability challenges
and measurement

As we’ve already established, a lot goes into email deliverability and plenty of things can keep emails from
landing in the inbox. We asked senders in our survey to identify their biggest deliverability challenges.

Respondents were given a list of common challenges and asked to identify and rank the top three. The results
reveal that the three biggest challenges are avoiding spam folders, increasing delivery rates, and staying off
email blocklists.

Top email deliverability challenges

(Respondents selected and ranked their top three options)

1. Staying out of 2. Getting more emails 3. Staying off email

the spam folder delivered blocklists

4. Reducing email 5. Maintaining list 6. Low subscriber

bounces hygiene engagement

7. Improving sender 8. Complying with 9. Setting up email

reputation regulations authentication

Interestingly, more complex topics such as compliance and email authentication placed lower in the ranking
of challenges. Our in-house experts note that the top three deliverability challenges represent ongoing
frustrations for senders. The second half of the list includes challenges like authentication, which is highly
technical but doesn’t need much attention once it’s set up.

This ranking of deliverability challenges was the same for both high-volume senders with more than 100,000
emails per month and low-volume senders with under 100,000 emails sent per month. So, it’s clear that keep-
ing messages out of the junk mail folder is a top priority. But even legitimate emails end up in spam for vari-
ous reasons. That’s why deliverability needs to be a focus if you want to experience higher email ROI.

17
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

“I absolutely agree that staying out of spam is the biggest problem

for senders because most people rarely check their spam folders.
Deliverability is all about getting to the inbox. You need to follow
best practices to achieve a higher inbox placement rate.”

Kate Nowrouzi, VP, Deliverability and Product Strategy, Mailgun by Sinch

Measuring email deliverability

It’s tough to track email deliverability. There’s no easy way to look into the inboxes of every subscriber on your
list to find out how mailbox providers filtered your message.

That’s why part of tracking email deliverability involves monitoring metrics that indicate signs of potential
trouble. There are also email metrics you want to keep high because they show that you’re sending to a
healthy, engaged list of subscribers. Measuring engagement matters because it’s one way that mailbox pro-
viders judge the reputation of senders, helping them decide whether a message should go to the inbox or
spam.

Our survey asked senders around the world to identify all of the deliverability metrics they actively monitor.
More than 12% of respondents admitted they don’t track deliverability at all. Among those who are moni-
toring deliverability metrics, the Delivery rate topped the list at nearly 58%. Open rates (57%) and Click rates
(48.4%) rounded out the top three.

18
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Which of the following email deliverability metrics are you actively monitoring?
(Respondents selected all that applied)

Delivery rate 57.8%

Open rates 57.0%

Click rates 48.4%

Hard bounces 40.8%

Unsubscribes 40.3%

Spam complaints 37.2%

Soft bounces 29.9%

Block/reject rate 23.9%

Read rates 20.2%

Inbox placement 16.4%

Requests 12.7%

Not monitoring deliverability 12.3%

Spam trap hits 10.8%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

We explained in the previous chapter that delivery rates only tell part of the story about email deliverability.
So, while it is certainly a key metric, senders need to dig further into their analytics and measure other factors
connected to deliverability.

One of the biggest misconceptions among senders is that email deliverability is all about the deliv-
ery rate.

You may wonder what opens and clicks have to do with deliverability. Our deliverability experts explained that
it’s important to monitor these engagement metrics over time because they reflect list health and can alert
you to potential problems.

19
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

“A quick and easy way to monitor how your email marketing

program is performing is to look at your unique open
rates trend over time. In an ideal word, it should stay
stable, or better yet, increase. If you start noticing a trend
of open rates dropping, it is usually a good indicator
that you are facing email deliverability issues.”

Alexandre Zibrick, Compliance and Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

There are two reasons the open rate is related to deliverability:

1. A good open rate shows mailbox providers your subscribers are engaged and want to receive your emails.
This improves your sending reputation and makes emails more likely to land in the inbox.

2. A sudden dip in the open rate could be a sign you’ve got more emails than normal that are landing in
spam.

Unfortunately, opens aren’t the most reliable email metric. Measures such as Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
(MPP) can inflate open rates because bots automatically open emails. As a result of this inaccuracy, many
senders are focusing more on clicks to better measure email performance and subscriber engagement.

Hard bounces (40.8%), Unsubscribes (40.3%), and Spam complaints (37.2%) are all important deliverability
metrics to monitor as well. Here are some reasons why:

• A high hard bounce rate is a sign you need to look at list hygiene. You are likely sending to inactive or
invalid email addresses, which should be removed.

• Unsubscribes are a natural part of the subscriber lifecycle. But too many unsubscribes mean you
should review your sending practices, including frequency and content relevancy.

• Spam complaints are much more serious than unsubscribes. They are a strong signal to mailbox pro-
viders that your emails are unsolicited and unwanted.

The average unsubscribe rate is around 0.1%. That’s one unsubscribe for every 1,000 emails delivered. While
most senders hate to see a subscriber leave their list, you should make the unsubscribe process simple and
straightforward. When it’s hard to unsubscribe, your emails are more likely to be marked as spam.

20
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Your spam complaint rate should be significantly lower than the unsubscribe rate – shoot for about 0.02%.
At Mailgun by Sinch, our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) requires that senders on our platform keep their com-
plaint rate at or below 0.08%.

Here are some quick tips to help keep your spam complaint rate low:

• Include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link in every email.

• Use a double opt-in process to ensure new subscribers want your emails.

• Find the right sending frequency by monitoring email engagement and staying consistent.

• Remove unengaged subscribers before they start complaining.

• Segment your lists and personalize emails to keep them interesting and relevant to recipients.

If you want to learn more, check out our blog post with advice on keeping spam complaints in check.

With both spam complaints and unsubscribes, you must stop sending to those contacts immediately. Fail-
ing to do so could definitely damage email deliverability. Plus, it could also get you into legal trouble as there
are privacy laws requiring that senders respect removal of consent.

Perhaps the most important metric of all is buried near the bottom of the list. Inbox placement is the ultimate
email deliverability metric. It tells senders whether delivered emails made it to the inbox or landed in spam.
Yet only 16.4% of survey respondents say they are actively monitoring their inbox placement rate.

“I was very surprised to see Inbox Placement listed so low, especially

because deliverability is all about getting your messages into the inbox.”

Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

21
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Exploring the inbox placement rate

Before we further explain what makes the inbox placement rate valuable and how it works, let’s make sure
we’re clear on what defines this metric and what makes it different than the delivery rate.

Here’s a comparison of how the two metrics are calculated:

Delivery rate % = (# of messages delivered ÷ # of messages sent) X 100

Inbox placement rate % = (# of messages in the inbox ÷ # of messages

delivered) X 100

Inbox placement tells you what happened to all the emails that were successfully delivered. If your inbox
placement rate is 85%, that means as much as 15% of your messages were filtered into spam.

So, why don’t more senders monitor inbox placement? One reason is that it’s not a metric you can easily find
in reporting from a typical email service provider (ESP). That’s because providing a report on inbox placement
requires some extra work.

“People may not even be aware that there are ways to track the inbox
placement rate. It’s not a metric that can be measured in the traditional
sense. Most providers can show opens, clicks, bounces, and delivery
rates pretty easily. But to do an inbox placement test you need to do
something else. You need to use a seed list and seed mailboxes.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

22
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

How inbox placement testing works

Inbox placement reports are based on results from sending to email addresses and mailboxes that aren’t
actually on any of your contact lists. You can conduct inbox placement testing to understand where your
emails are likely to land before you send to your actual list.

A seed list includes addresses from a range of mailbox providers that the sender or email service provider
owns and uses for testing. Some senders create their own seed lists to test inbox placement, but these tend
to be much more limited than the seed lists and mailboxes that an ESP such as Mailgun provides. So, finding
a service that offers inbox placement testing is the best way to ensure accuracy.

An inbox placement report from Mailgun by Sinch

When senders receive an inbox placement report, such as the one above from Mailgun by Sinch, they can
investigate the results of a seed test for specific mailbox providers. These results provide senders with an
overall score for the mailbox provider as well as a breakdown of where the emails ended up.

23
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Inbox placement testing is the most accurate way to measure email deliverability. Yet only 16.4% of
senders monitor their inbox placement rate.

However, inbox placement testing is gaining momentum among senders and email marketers. It tends to be
more popular among high-volume senders. More than 28% of respondents with a sending volume of over
1 million emails a month monitor inbox placement. That percentage drops the lower the send volume gets.

Monthly send volume comparison: Tracking the inbox placement rate

More than 1 million emails 28.3%

100,000 to 1 million emails 24.1%

50,000 to 99,999 emails 17.7%

Fewer than 50,000 emails 13.0%

0% 10% 20%

Want better inbox placement? The best way to avoid the spam folder is to prove you deserve to land in
the inbox. Mailbox providers will ultimately decide how to filter your messages based on a variety of factors.
Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and the rest are paying attention to your sending practices. If you’ve got a bad rep-
utation with them, your deliverability will suffer.

What’s your reputation?

When marketers consider reputation, they’re probably thinking about how customers and prospects view their
brand. Those with more technical experience understand that domains and IP addresses have reputations
too. The decisions you make concerning your email program will affect what’s known as your sender rep-
utation with mailbox providers.

Sender reputation is a score that mailbox providers assign to bulk email senders, which informs how emails
from that domain or IP should be filtered. The truth is – sender reputation and brand reputation are con-
nected in many ways. It’s likely that a trustworthy sender with a good reputation is also a trusted brand. You
don’t earn a good reputation by annoying people with spam or using deceptive marketing methods.

24
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

There are two main factors connected to sender reputation:

1. IP reputation: This measures the behavior and quality of sending practices from a specific IP address. If
it’s a shared IP, the reputation applies to multiple senders.

2. Domain reputation: This measures the trustworthiness of your branded domain or website, including any
subdomains you’re using for sending mail.

Our deliverability experts say mailbox providers like Gmail place a higher importance on domain reputation.
That’s because it’s targeted toward specific senders. The reputation of a domain is more closely connected
to a business or brand. IP reputation is still a factor, especially with Outlook. So, because many businesses
use Outlook as their mailbox provider, IP reputation may have a bigger impact on B2B email deliverability.

“It is very easy to destroy your sender reputation, but it takes time
to build it. You can damage your reputation with Gmail overnight,
and it can take about four to six months to repair it.”

Kate Nowrouzi, VP, Deliverability and Product Strategy, Mailgun by Sinch

Just as we did with the prioritization of email deliverability, our survey asked participants to rate how well they
understand their sender reputation.

Results suggest many are stuck in the middle when it comes to understanding their reputation with mailbox
providers. More than 45% of those surveyed rated their knowledge of sender reputation at 50 or below.

25
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Rate how well you understand your organization's reputation

as an email sender with top mailbox providers

30%

22.8%
Percent of respondents

20%

9.8% 10.3%
8.9% 9.1%
10% 7.9%
6.3%
4.6% 3.8% 3.8% 4.5%

0%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Weak understanding Strong understanding

Here are some known ways to either support or damage your sender reputation:

Good for sender reputation Bad for sender reputation

Purchased or scraped email

An updated email list with verified addresses
contacts on your list

Highly engaged subscribers Low email engagement rates

Quality content in email campaigns Lots of spam complaints

Using a double-opt in process Sudden jumps in list growth

Removing or segmenting inactive subscribers Ignoring list hygiene

Strong email authentication practices Lack of proper email authentication

A history of consistent sending practices Failure to warm up new sending IPs/domains

26
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

While mailbox providers won’t come straight out and tell you their opinions of your domain and IP reputation,
there are ways to check and monitor sender reputation.

Our survey found that the most popular tools for keeping track of sender reputation are MXToolbox (28.7%),
Google Postmaster Tools (21.9%), which specifically tracks sender reputation with Gmail, and Mailgun by
Sinch (16.4%).

However, nearly 38% of respondents admit they are Not monitoring reputation, which means they could be
in the dark until something goes wrong and a deliverability issue needs to be addressed.

What tools do you use to check and monitor your email sender reputation?
(Respondents selected all that applied)

MXToolbox 28.7%

Google Postmaster Tools 21.9%

Mailgun by Sinch (InboxReady) 16.4%

Email service provider (ESP) 15.6%

Other 11.7%

Sender Score 9.7%

Microsoft SNDS 7.8%

Barracuda Central 3.7%

Talos Intelligence 1.9%

Send Forensics 1.4%

Not monitoring reputation 37.8%

0% 10% 20% 30%

Let’s say you discover you don’t have the best sender reputation with mailbox providers, and you want to repair
it. What are the most effective ways to build a stronger email sender reputation?

When we asked survey participants for their opinion on what would have the biggest positive impact on
sender reputation, they selected Increasing engagement (25.3%) most often. Improving list hygiene, Reduc-
ing spam complaints, and Strengthening email authentication each received around 13% of the vote.

27
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

What do you believe would have the biggest impact

on improving your sender reputation?

Increasing engagement 25.3%

Improving list hygiene 13.6%

Reducing spam complaints 13.2%

Strengthening email authentication 13.1%

Reducing bounce rates 10.0%

Having a consistent send frequency 9.3%

Switching to a dedicated IP 8.0%

Warming up the IP 3.3%

Reducing unsubscribes 2.6%

Making it easier to unsubscribe 1.6%

0% 10% 20%

Of course, the recipe for a good sender reputation includes everything on this list. But Mailgun experts agree
that the health and quality of your list is a top priority, and that includes keeping contacts engaged.

“All of these efforts can improve sender reputation.

Personally, my focus would be on engagement, which ties
heavily into list building practices. Make sure the recipients'
addresses you’ve collected have agreed in a clear way to
receive your emails from the start. Then, ensure they stay
engaged with your emails over time. Making sure that you're
aligned with their expectations about your email program
will go a long way to solidify your sender reputation.”

Alexandre Zibrick, Compliance and Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

28
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

Finally, we asked senders to let us know which of the major mailbox providers tend to be the toughest on
senders, including potential spammers. In other words, who is the toughest mailbox provider to keep happy?

The results weren’t even close. Respondents in our survey overwhelmingly chose Gmail (46.2%) as the tough-
est mailbox provider. The next closest was Outlook (29.8%) followed by Yahoo Mail (8.8%).

In your opinion, which mailbox provider is the toughest

on senders and potential spam emails?

Gmail 46.2%

Microsoft Outlook 29.8%

Yahoo Mail 8.8%

Apple Mail 5.3%

Proton Mail 2.8%

AOL 1.5%

Mail.ru 1.3%

GMX 1.1%

Zoho Mail 0.9%

Yandex 0.7%

T-Online 0.7%

Web.de 0.7%

Libero 0.3%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Some of our deliverability experts weren’t surprised at all by these results. For one thing, Gmail is one of the
most popular email clients in the world and Gmail deliverability matters to every sender. Gmail is also known
for being tough on spam as they have gotten very good at identifying and containing it.

29
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 2: Deliverability challenges and measurement

At the same time, Gmail gives legitimate senders ways to keep tabs on their reputation (Postmaster Tools),
and it is transparent about how Gmail spam filters work. Gmail also provides best practices for bulk senders
as well as specific guidelines to prevent mail from going to spam or getting blocked.

E M A I L’ S N O T D E A D
The big deliverability episode

Discover what’s new in the world of email deliverability.

Check out an episode of our podcast featuring
deliverability guru Brad Gurley and our own Nick
Schafer. Learn about sender reputation and more.

Listen Now

30
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

PA R T 3

Blocklisting and its impact

An email blocklist is a collection of domains or servers that have been identified as sending unsolicited bulk
mail. In other words, it’s a list of known and potential spammers who get blocked from delivering mail to pro-
viders that are using that blocklist service.

Legitimate, non-spammy email senders occasionally land on blocklists too. In some cases, it’s not the send-
er’s fault, and sometimes it’s because of an honest mistake. Other times, blocklisting can be traced back to a
failure to follow best practices around list building, list hygiene, authentication, and more.

Our survey found that around 19% of senders had been placed on a blocklist within the last two years.
More than 24% were unsure whether they’d been blocklisted during that time.

18.9+24.6+56F
Has your sending domain or IP been placed on an
email blocklist within the last two years?

Yes
18.9%

No
56.5%
Unsure
24.6%

Not all blocklists are created equal. Some will have an outsized impact on deliverability, but others may not
cause much disruption to your email traffic at all. Mailgun’s deliverability team says that Spamhaus is by far
the most important blocklist provider to monitor.

31
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

The Spamhaus Project is an international, nonprofit organization that works to stop spam and cybersecurity
threats. Spamhaus maintains several blocklists that mailbox providers use to protect their users from both
spam and cyberattacks.

Other major blocklists providers include:

• Barracuda

• SpamCop

• SORBS

Depending on the blocklist and the specific situation, being blocklisted may not be a reason to freak out. But
if you’ve been listed with a major blocklist provider like Spamhaus, you need to start the delisting process as
soon as possible.

“Senders who haven’t been educated on blocklists can get really

scared when they are blocklisted, even if it is a minor one that
will not affect their results in any way. But if you are talking about
a major blocklist, and it’s going to take you a couple of days or
longer to get delisted, you will definitely see some email traffic
being rejected. And you will most likely see revenue going down.”

Alexandre Zibrick, Compliance and Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

So, what are the reasons a sender can end up on a blocklist, and how long does it typically take to get delisted
so emails start flowing again? We asked respondents in our survey who experienced blocklisting in the last
two years to tell us more.

When it comes to removal, about half of the blocklisted senders say they were able to get delisted in less
than three days. For nearly 18%, it took less than 24 hours. However, more than 14% of blocklisted senders
say they are still dealing with an unresolved situation.

32
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

How long did it take to get removed from the blocklist?

Less than 24 hours 17.8%

One or two days 32.2%

Three days to one week 21.9%

One week to one month 9.2%

More than a month 4.6%

Still unresolved 14.3%

0% 10% 20% 30%

Even when blocklisting lasts just a few days, there can be serious business consequences for the blocked
sender, especially if it impacts transactional messages. But even temporarily blocked marketing emails could
result in serious declines in website traffic and revenue from email.

That’s why a service such as blocklist monitoring protects your investment in the email channel. The right
partner can also help senders get delisted faster. Thanks to Mailgun’s industry connections, our team often
vouches for reputable senders who land on blocklists, which can expedite the delisting process. Our research
found around 30% of senders turned to outside help for blocklist removal.

If you’ve done something to deserve getting added to the blocklist, the delisting process could take longer. You
may need to work with the blocklist provider and document how you’ve cleaned up your act.

Many of the senders we surveyed believe their blocklisting can be blamed on the actions of others. By far
the most common reason for getting blocklisted was a Bad sender on a shared IP (31.9%). Another 15.7%
of respondents were Unsure why they’d been blocklisted, and 12.4% say Spam complaints caused them to
land on a blocklist.

33
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

To the best of your knowledge, what was the primary

reason you were added to a blocklist?

Bad sender on a shared IP 31.9%

Unsure 15.7%

Spam complaints 12.4%

Spam trap on our list 11.6%

Increase in send volume 7.3%

Other 7.3%

We were hacked 4.9%

Poor list hygiene 4.6%

Authentication issue 3.5%

Spam law violation 0.8%

0% 10% 20% 30%

When you send from a shared IP address, you share the reputation of others sending mail from that IP. If
you happen to be sharing the sending IP with spammers, it is certainly possible that it could lead to blocklist-
ing. When you send from a dedicated IP, you don’t have to worry about bad actors. You’ve also got no one to
blame for blocklisting but yourself.

We typically recommend that higher volume senders with more than 100,000 emails per month strongly
consider a dedicated IP. This helps those organizations establish a reputation with mailbox providers and
protect it. But not every organization needs – or can afford – a dedicated IP. Those with lower email sending
volumes may actually want to avoid dedicated IPs. A low volume of emails (and inconsistent sending) makes
it harder for mailbox providers to assess your sender reputation. In that case, it may be better for deliverabil-
ity to use a shared IP with lower volumes.

The policies your ESP adheres to can impact the risks of using a shared IP. If a service provider allows spam-
mers and shady senders to use its platform, it puts you in greater danger of getting blocklisted. That’s why
Mailgun only accepts customers who meet the guidelines in our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). It’s designed
to protect our reputation as an ESP as well as that of our shared IP customers.

34
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

“A shared IP will obviously have its risks. With dedicated IPs it’s different because
it’s your responsibility, and if you’re unsure why you’ve been blocklisted, it
probably comes down to your list building, list hygiene, or sending practices.”

Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

There are several ways landing on a blocklist can damage a business. More than a third of the senders we
surveyed (33.7%) said Delays for important messages was the most significant impact of getting block-
listed. That was followed by just over 22% who cited Dissatisfied customers, almost 16% who experienced
Lost time/productivity to fix the problem, and 12% who say Loss of revenue was the biggest impact of the
blocklisting.

What was the most significant impact of being placed on the email blocklist?

Delays for important messages 33.7%

Dissatisfied customers 22.1%

Lost time/productivity 15.9%

Loss of revenue 12.1%

Damage to brand reputation 9.2%

Changed emailing practices 4.3%

Other 2.7%

0% 10% 20% 30%

Sometimes blocklisting requires that a sender make changes to get delisted. Other times, they may volun-
tarily take action to avoid getting blocklisted in the future. We asked senders to identify all the changes they
made because of being blocklisted.

35
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

Our survey found that the most common change among blocklisted senders was that they Switched to
a dedicated IP (27.8%). Not far behind, 27.3% of respondents Started blocklist monitoring. Another 23.1%
Chose a new email service provider, and 18.5% Scrubbed their email list after being blocklisted.

What changes did you make to your email program to remedy the blocklist problem?
(Respondents selected all that applied)

Switched to a dedicated IP 27.8%

Started blocklist monitoring 27.3%

Other 25.1%

Chose a new email service provider (ESP) 23.1%

Scrubbed the email list 18.5%

Added authentication protocols 16.8%

Improved email engagement 15.4%

Updated privacy compliance 10.5%

Reviewed/changed opt-in practices 9.9%

0% 10% 20%

Mailgun’s deliverability experts say that switching to a dedicated IP or finding a new ESP with a better repu-
tation and stricter policies could certainly help those who are concerned about sharing an IP with bad send-
ers. But what if it’s you and not them?

If you’re ignoring best practices, and you take bad habits with you to a dedicated IP or a new ESP, your prob-
lems will likely follow you. If you don’t realize it is your actions putting you at risk, or if you have no idea what
prompted the blocklisting, you need to get to the bottom of it so the right changes can be made.

36
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 3: Blocklisting and its impact

“Finding out what caused a blocklisting is something we can help

our customers look into. With Microsoft, for example, our team can
often map out events that led up to the block by investigating failures
and warnings that point back to the problem. That’s the benefit of
having folks on your side who understand deliverability.”

Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

E M A I L’ S N O T D E A D
Keeping it real and authentic with Spamhaus

Curious to know more about Spamhaus and its

blocklists? Check out an episode of our podcast
featuring industry liaison, Matt Stith. Hear directly
from someone inside the organization.

Listen Now

37
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

PA R T 4

Email authentication

How do mailbox providers know whether incoming mail is from a spammer or a legitimate sender? What’s
being done to keep bad actors from impersonating your brand and using the trust you’ve built to carry out
phishing attacks? Email authentication is a big part of the answer.

Email authentication involves a collection of protocols and specifications designed to verify the origin and
authenticity of mail that comes from legitimate senders. In other words, it’s a way of showing receiving mail
servers that you are who you say you are.

Mail servers use what’s known as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send, relay, and receive messages
between senders and recipients. The problem is that SMTP has some major flaws. It does not support encryp-
tion and lacks a way to validate the identity of the sender, which has made email a popular attack vector for
bad actors.

To remedy this, several authentication protocols and related specifications were developed to thwart bad
actors, help mailbox providers filter mail, and protect email recipients. These are DNS TXT records that receiv-
ing mail servers reference to verify the authenticity of messages.

Email authentication essentials

Sender Policy Framework (SPF): An SPF record includes a list of all the domains and mail servers
that are authorized to send mail on behalf of your organizational domain. Receiving mail servers
reference the SPF record to make sure messages that appear to come from your company are
from an approved source.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): The DKIM authentication method uses a pair of encrypted
digital signatures also known as public and private keys. These keys help receiving mail servers
associate an incoming message with a specific domain. DKIM also ensures messages are not
altered during transit.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): The DMARC

specification harnesses the power of both DKIM and SPF by checking for alignment. It is an effec-
tive way of preventing email brand spoofing. DMARC policies inform mailbox providers on what to
do with messages that fail authentication. DMARC also provides reports that detail who’s sending
mail on behalf of your domain.

38
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI): Brands that enforce DMARC are eligible to
have a verified logo appear in the inbox. BIMI logos are meant to be a reward for senders with
strong authentication. It gives brands control over inbox logos and could boost engagement while
serving as a trust mark.

Messages that lack proper email authentication are much more likely to be blocked or filtered into spam.
In 2022, Gmail began requiring that new senders trying to deliver messages to its users must set up either
SPF or DKIM at a minimum. However, it is highly recommended that senders use both of these protocols.

SPF and DKIM usage

According to Mailgun’s deliverability experts, the use of SPF and DKIM is table stakes for most senders. It’s
highly likely that your ESP makes SPF and DKIM setup a requirement, or your ESP may be using its own pro-
tocols to authenticate messages for you.

To find out more about senders’ familiarity with these important protocols, we simply asked whether they
were using SPF and DKIM or not. Results for the Sender Policy Framework protocol show that while more
than half of those surveyed say they use SPF, nearly 13% say they are not and close to one-third are Unsure.

55.4+31.8+12.8F
Does your organization use SPF (Sender Policy
Framework) for email authentication?

No
12.8%

Unsure Yes
31.8% 55.4%

When it comes to the DKIM protocol, 58.5% of senders report that they have implemented DomainKeys Iden-
tified Mail. Around 11% say they don’t use DKIM and more than 30% are Unsure if the protocol is implemented
or not.

39
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

58.5+30.4+11.1F
Does your organization use DKIM (DomainKeys
Identified Mail) for email authentication?

No
11.1%

Unsure
30.4%
Yes
58.5%

When isolating survey results for responses from marketing job roles, uncertainty around the use of authen-
tication protocols increases. Uncertainty also drops significantly when results are filtered for those who work
in IT or specialize in email deliverability.

Many marketers may be unfamiliar with the technical aspects of authentication because it’s all happening
behind the scenes on domain name servers. Since IT professionals are the ones setting up these DNS TXT
records, they have more email authentication knowledge.

“There are some senders who may not be familiar with SPF and DKIM
protocols. But with most email service providers, it’s a requirement to
have that set up. In many cases, their messages are signed with SPF and
DKIM, but it might be the ESP’s and not their own. If you’re using a modern
sending platform, your messages are going to be authenticated.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

40
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

If you don’t know whether your organization is using SPF or DKIM authentication, check with your IT depart-
ment or ask your ESP to make sure these measures are being taken care of for you.

DMARC implementation
DMARC is a powerful tool for email authentication, security, and protecting a sender’s brand. However, it is
also underused and misunderstood. One of the biggest problems with DMARC is that, even among senders
who’ve set it up, it is not being enforced in a way that helps stop spoofing.

More than 42% of senders in our survey say they are using DMARC as part of their email authentication.
A recent analysis from MXToolbox suggested that around half of Fortune 500 companies still haven’t imple-
mented DMARC. So, while the 42.5% using DMARC in Mailgun’s survey is lower than SPF and DKIM usage,
it’s an encouraging number since it includes senders of all sizes. Around 13% of respondents say they are not
using DMARC and close to 40% are Unsure.

42+38.8+18.7F
Has your organization set up DMARC (Domain-based Message
Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)?

No
18.7%

Yes
42.5%

Unsure
38.8%

To experience the benefits of DMARC, senders need to enforce the right policy in the DNS TXT record.
There are three possible DMARC policies. They suggest how receiving mail servers should handle messages
that fail DKIM and SPF authentication.

41
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

DMARC policy options

1. p=none: This policy tells receiving mail servers to do nothing if an email fails authentication. The mes-
sage will be delivered to the inbox unless the mailbox provider chooses to filter it into another folder. The
p=none policy does nothing to stop email spoofing.

2. p=quarantine: This policy tells mailbox providers that authentication failures should be quarantined and
treated with caution. That means the receiving mail server will probably accept the message, but it will
likely get filtered into the spam folder.

3. p=reject: This is the strongest DMARC policy. It informs mail servers to treat authentication failures as
malicious. The email will most likely be blocked from delivery. It won’t even go to the junk folder and the
recipient will never see it.

Our survey revealed that many respondents are unaware of how their organization enforces DMARC. When
we asked senders who’ve implemented DMARC to describe their policy, more than 40% were Unsure. Around
23% say their policy is set to p=none and just over 20% are using p=quarantine. Only 16.6% of senders have
implemented the strictest policy of p=reject.

22.9+16.6+20.340.2F
How is your current DMARC policy set up?

p=none
22.9%

Unsure
40.2%

p=reject
16.6%

p=quarantine
20.3%

42
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

The lack of awareness around DMARC policies stood out as a concern to Mailgun’s deliverability experts.
That’s because senders need to be very careful when setting up DMARC as a mistake in the TXT record could
have negative effects on your deliverability.

In fact, that’s the entire reason the p=none policy exists. The less stringent policy was meant to let send-
ers test their DMARC setup before enforcing it. Unfortunately, too many organizations never move away
from the p=none policy. This means they might be receiving DMARC reports, but they won’t be strengthen-
ing authentication.

“If senders want to experience the benefits of DMARC, they

need to change their policies to either quarantine or reject
after a testing phase. Otherwise, you’re doing nothing to
prevent bad actors from spoofing your brand in the inbox.”

Kate Nowrouzi, VP, Deliverability and Product Strategy, Mailgun by Sinch

So, if DMARC is such an effective addition to email authentication, why have senders been slow to adopt the
specification? We asked respondents who say they are not using DMARC to tell us what’s holding them back.

For some senders, DMARC setup is an ongoing project. Just over 23% said We’re working on it when asked
why they haven’t implemented DMARC. But a similar percentage of respondents said It’s not necessary or
It’s too complicated while around 8% are Worried it could hurt deliverability.

43
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part4 : Email authentication

Why has your organization not yet implemented DMARC for email authentication?

It’s too complicated 23.8%

We’re working on it 23.3%

It’s not necessary 21.1%

Worried it could hurt deliverability 8.3%

Other 23.5%

0% 10% 20%

Those who feel DMARC is unnecessary or too complicated may believe SPF and DKIM are enough. They
don’t see the benefit of adding more authentication. While DMARC can protect brand reputation by prevent-
ing spoofing, its primary purpose is protecting recipients and helping mailbox providers stop spammers and
scammers.

Still, adopting DMARC could be a very smart move if you want mailbox providers to view you as a reputable
sender. Some in the industry even believe DMARC could become mandatory in the future.

“At some point, mailbox providers may decide to prioritize

messages from senders that have DMARC policies set
to reject or quarantine, because those are the ones they
can verify and trust. We haven’t seen anyone take that
step yet, but the groundwork is there to require senders
to have a DMARC policy set to something besides
p=none. That might be what it takes for adoption."

Jonathan Torres, TAM Team Manager, Mailgun by Sinch

44
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

BIMI adoption
BIMI is the newest email standard connected to email authentication. Technically, it doesn’t do anything
to help authenticate emails, but the presence of a BIMI logo represents senders who are taking the issue
seriously.

That’s because only senders with a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject are even eligible for a BIMI logo.
In fact, the BIMI standard was created to encourage DMARC adoption and stronger enforcement.

Only around 8% of senders in our survey have successfully implemented BIMI to date. Another 8.8% say they
are working on setting up BIMI. There’s a fairly even split between respondents who know they have not imple-
mented BIMI and those who are Unsure, which indicates a lack of awareness.

Has your organization set up BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message

7.9+8.8+42.141.2F
Identification) so that your brand's logo displays in email inboxes?
Yes
7.9%

Working on it
8.8%

No
41.2%

Unsure
42.1%

45
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

For the respondents who answered No to the previous question, we followed up to ask why BIMI isn’t some-
thing they are at least pursuing. Apparently, the options we provided in the survey didn’t cover all the potential
reasons as Other was the top choice at more than 30%.

23.5% of those who are not pursuing BIMI implementation say it’s because there is a Lack of internal support
for the idea. 16.7% believe BIMI is unnecessary, and 12% think Setup is too technical.

What is the primary reason your organization is

not pursuing a BIMI logo at this time?

Other 30.5%

Lack of internal support 23.5%

BIMI is unnecessary 16.7%

Setup is too technical 12.0%

Not enforcing DMARC 9.1%

VMC is cost-prohibitive 8.2%

0% 10% 20% 30%

At the bottom of the list of reasons why BIMI is not being pursued is that the VMC is cost prohibitive (8.2%).
A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) is required to get a BIMI logo to display in both Gmail and Apple Mail, which
are the two most popular email clients. To obtain a VMC, you need a copyrighted logo that is verified by one
of two entities: Entrust or DigiCert. This can cost around $1,500 a year, which may be too much of an invest-
ment for some smaller senders.

Among senders using BIMI, our survey found that close to one third have purchased a VMC, while 37.8% may
plan to but have not done so yet. 16% of senders who’ve set up BIMI are Not planning to get a VMC while
almost 15% are Unsure if they have one or not.

46
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

31.4+37.8+14.816F
Have you gotten a verified mark certificate (VMC) for your brand’s BIMI logo?

Not planning to
16.0%

Yes
31.4%

Unsure
14.8%

Not yet
37.8%

It’s true that implementing BIMI can be a technical and time-consuming process. In addition to DMARC
enforcement requirements and the cost of a VMC, BIMI logos also must be created in a specific file format,
and it’s yet another TXT record to add to the DNS. Ultimately, it requires that marketers and IT specialists work
together.

So, why do a growing number of brands see value in BIMI adoption? According to our survey results, the big-
gest driver for pursuing BIMI logos is Protecting brand reputation (24.6%). That’s followed by Building brand
awareness (23.4%). So, it’s clear that BIMI implementation is a branding move.

47
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

What was the key driver in pursuing a BIMI logo for your email program?

Protecting brand reputation 24.6%

Building brand awareness 23.4%

Customer/subscriber trust 18.2%

Email security 16.4%

Increasing engagement 13.1%

Other 3.0%

Competitors with inbox logos 1.2%

0% 10% 20%

There are also senders who see value in BIMI for other reasons. More than 18% of those using BIMI say they
do so because it can increase Customer/subscriber trust. Another 16% say it has to do with improving Email
security.

As BIMI adoption becomes more widespread, email recipients will likely take notice of those inbox logos. If a
logo is not there, people may be more suspicious of possible spoofing and phishing attempts, because those
malicious messages won’t have a BIMI logo. That’s how BIMI builds trust and helps promote a more secure
email inbox.

As a bonus, there’s evidence that inbox logos really do help with Increasing engagement, which more than
13% of senders called a key driver of BIMI adoption. A study from Entrust and Red Sift found that BIMI logos
could increase open rates by as much as 21%. The study also suggested that the presence of an inbox logo
increases the likelihood of purchase by as much as 34%. That kind of engagement is a strong signal to mail-
box providers that your messages should land in the inbox and not spam.

48
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 4: Email authentication

“That’s why I love BIMI. If senders want to enjoy the benefit of

having that brand identification, then they need to implement
DMARC. And DMARC is great. It’s not going to improve deliverability
directly. But it can protect your reputation as a sender.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

Email security and compliance guide

Want to learn more about authentication and how to

make the email inbox a safer place? Get a free guide from
Mailgun by Sinch to find out what our experts have to say.

Download Now

49
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

PA R T 5

List building and hygiene

While email infrastructure and authentication protocols are part of the IT professional’s world, list building and
hygiene often fall squarely on the shoulders of email marketers.

It is usually marketers who are responsible for acquiring new subscribers and managing various lists of email
contacts. Your approach to growing the list, verifying new contacts, and even segmenting subscribers will
impact your ability to reach the inbox and stay out of spam.

“I always talk to our customers about list hygiene

because I think it’s so important. Building and maintaining
a healthy list is huge for email deliverability.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

When it comes to list building and maintenance, there are good habits and bad habits. Let’s explore some
survey results to find out what senders are doing right and where they’re veering off course.

Bad list building habits

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it one million times: Purchasing a list of email contacts is a very bad idea.
Yet, our deliverability experts see people bragging on social media about building a huge email list using ques-
tionable methods.

When we asked the 1900+ senders who took our survey if their organizations ever purchased email contacts,
12.5% admitted they had. While 77.4% claim their companies had not purchased a list of addresses, more
than 10% were Unsure.

50
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

12.5+10.1+77.4F
Has your organization ever purchased a list of relevant
email addresses to reach new prospects?

Yes
12.5%

Unsure
10.1%

No
77.4%

The foundation of responsible list building involves obtaining consent and monitoring interest from subscrib-
ers. When you purchase a list of new contacts, you become a spammer the moment you send them any-
thing. It doesn’t matter if they represent a relevant target audience. If those people never signed up to hear
from your brand, you are sending unsolicited mail they’re probably not interested in, and there’s a good chance
it will eventually hurt your deliverability.

Even valid email addresses on a purchased list can create deliverability problems because those users never
opted in and aren’t expecting to hear from you. Sending emails to these contacts will no doubt generate plenty
of spam complaints. And the higher your spam complaint rate climbs, the lower your inbox placement rate
is likely to fall.

On top of that, purchased email lists often contain pristine spam traps (aka honeypots). These are essen-
tially fake email addresses that mailbox providers create to catch spammers. Sending mail to spam traps is
a good way to end up on blocklists.

Another questionable acquisition practice involves scraping the web to find email addresses you can use to
build your list. Our survey found nearly 10% of senders have tried this technique and another 10% were Unsure
if it’s something their organization has done.

51
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

9.9+9.9+80.2F
Has your organization ever used an automated tool to scrape
the web and harvest email addresses for list building?
Yes
9.9%

Unsure
9.9%

No
80.2%

This is another good way to get spam traps on your list. It’s likely that some of these senders were simply
unaware that this practice is frowned upon and can have negative consequences for email deliverability. But
even though an email address may be publicly available on the web, it doesn’t mean that you have permission
to email that account.

Not only will purchased and scraped contacts be more likely to hit the “report spam” button and less likely to
engage with your email, but you could also be violating privacy laws. The European Union’s General Data Pro-
tection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) prohibit sending commercial mes-
sages without consent. Those are just two of the more well-known privacy laws. Many other regions have their
own rules for senders regarding the consent to email.

Good list building habits

There are also some email list building strategies that ensure you only collect contacts who are likely to be
engaged with what you send. Plus, senders can also implement policies that help them manage their lists by
identifying contacts who’ve stopped engaging.

52
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

One of the best ways to be sure new contacts consent to receive your emails is to implement what’s known
as a double opt-in process. Here’s how double opt-in works:

1. Someone fills out a form to receive emails from your brand.

2. You then deliver an initial email asking them to confirm they want to subscribe.

3. After the individual clicks a link in the confirmation email, they are officially added to your list.

Some marketers aren’t fans of the double opt-in method because it does add an extra step that’s a bit of a bar-
rier to list growth. However, a double opt-in promotes list health and helps verify that new contacts are using
valid email addresses at signup.

As an alternative, senders may implement what’s known as confirmed opt-in lite (COIL). In this process, new
subscribers are segmented onto a separate list until it’s clear whether they’ll be engaged with emails or not.
Those new contacts won’t be added to your main list unless they start opening and clicking.

When we asked survey respondents if they ever use a double opt-in process for subscriber acquisition, just
over a quarter of them said they do. But more than half of senders admitted they do not use a double opt-in
for list building.

26.7+21.2+52.1F
Are you ever using a double opt-in process when
adding new contacts to your email list?

Yes
26.7%

No
52.1%

Unsure
21.2%

According to Mailgun’s deliverability experts, ignoring the benefits of the double opt-in for new subscribers is
a major missed opportunity. More senders should consider it.

53
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

“Being in the position I’m in, I would recommend that every sender use
a double opt-in all the time. Not only does it ensure you only acquire
subscribers who are more likely to engage, but it also helps prevents bots
from abusing signup forms, which is a significant email security risk.”

Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

But a double opt-in isn’t enough either. Over time, good contacts can go bad. People abandon email addresses,
change jobs, or sometimes subscribers just lose interest and become unengaged. To maintain the health of
your list, it’s important to manage these contacts.

Left alone, those inactive and outdated contacts can erode your deliverability efforts. If too many recipients
are unengaged, it could negatively affect your sender reputation. Plus, old email addresses can become recy-
cled spam traps. These are addresses that mailbox providers repurpose to catch spammers and senders who
fail to keep their data clean.

Sunset policies help you define when to remove or segment unengaged contacts to avoid these
problems. A sunset policy is an email segmentation strategy that represents a proactive approach
to list hygiene.

Essentially, you set benchmarks to define disengaged contacts based on the last time they opened an email
or clicked a link. When a contact reaches a certain threshold, they are either removed or segmented to a list
of low-engagement subscribers to which you send less frequently.

“A sunset policy is one of my favorite practices. I’ve

used this many times to help customers recover from
a damaged sender reputation. I know from experience
working with different senders that it can work.”

54 Nick Schafer, Sr. Manager of Deliverability and Compliance, Mailgun by Sinch

State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

While it’s a helpful best practice, only 22.5% of senders in our survey say they are using a sunset policy to
identify disengaged subscribers. Nearly 60% admit they don’t have a policy in place while almost 18% are
Unsure if sunsetting subscribers is part of their strategy.

22.5+17.9+59F
Are you using a sunset policy to periodically remove
unengaged subscribers from your email list?

Yes
22.5%

No
59.6%
Unsure
17.9%

Marketers tend to place a lot of value on the number of contacts they have on their lists. But the truth is –
that's a vanity metric. It’s not the size of your list that matters most, it’s how subscribers respond to your
campaigns that matters. You won’t see a higher return on investment from email by simply adding lots of
contacts. Your ROI goes up only when that list growth is coupled with high engagement.

It may be tough to fight the urge to send every email marketing message to every subscriber. It may also
be painful to voluntarily remove contacts. But it’s much better to control the situation yourself before an old
address becomes a spam trap or a disengaged subscriber makes a spam complaint.

55
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene
“People always fear reducing their list size and targeting
subscribers differently. But once they start to see the
benefits, the story tells itself. Sunsetting allows you to
focus on engaged recipients. A subscriber who never
opens or clicks isn’t bringing you any value.”

Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

List hygiene processes

Every household has its cleaning schedule, and email senders have different timeframes for housekeeping
when it comes to list hygiene, too. The general best practice is to conduct thorough list hygiene at least
twice a year.

When our survey asked respondents to tell us about their list hygiene practices, results show 27.4% clean their
lists Monthly or more, and nearly 17% do it Quarterly. Unfortunately, we also found 26.2% of senders Rarely
conduct list hygiene and another 12.5% Never do it. That’s a combined 38.7% of senders who are not pri-
oritizing list hygiene.

How often do you conduct email list hygiene?

Monthly or more 27.4%

Quarterly 16.9%

Once or twice per year 16.9%

Rarely 26.2%

Never 12.5%

0% 10% 20%

The survey also found more than 40% of respondents with send volumes above one million emails a
month conduct list hygiene Monthly or more. As you’d imagine, these senders likely have massive data-
bases that are constantly changing.

56
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

Paying attention to list hygiene is important for email deliverability, but it also helps email teams get a more
accurate picture of how their campaigns perform. If you’re sending emails to invalid addresses, outdated con-
tacts, and inactive subscribers, your metrics will suffer.

Among those who conduct list hygiene quarterly or more often, 28.5% say the biggest benefit is Fewer unsub-
scribes and spam complaints while another 24% cite Better engagement metrics. There are many other
benefits to maintaining a healthy email list, including the ability to Maintain sender reputation (22.6%) and
Improved conversion rates (9.1%). You will definitely see conversion and engagement rates from email
increase once you remove dead weight from your list.

What is the biggest benefit you’ve noticed from maintaining email list hygiene?

Fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints 28.5%

Better engagement metrics 24.1%

Maintain sender reputation 22.6%

Improved conversion rates 9.1%

Lower email CPM
9.0%
(cost per thousand messages sent)
Other 6.6%

0% 10% 20%

When you clean the house, you can use a broom or a vacuum. You can also get a robotic vacuum that auto-
matically cleans your floors while you sit back and relax. Likewise, email teams can conduct list hygiene pro-
cesses themselves or rely on tools and partners to help them out.

57
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

Our survey found that 45.7% of senders are manually removing invalid and inactive contacts from their
lists. Another 26.7% say they’re only removing contacts who explicitly unsubscribe, which is not a proactive
approach to list hygiene.

A total of 9% of senders rely on their ESP to remove invalid addresses, spam traps, and hard bounces. Only
18.6% of senders say they are using software to automate list hygiene processes.

45+26.7+18.69F
Which option best describes your email list hygiene process?
We let our ESP take care of
invalid contacts and spam traps.
9.0%

We use software to automate

list cleaning.
18.6% We manually remove invalid
and inactive contacts.
45.7%

We don’t remove contacts

unless they unsubscribe.
26.7%

A good way to keep a clean house is to make sure it never gets too messy in the first place. Email teams can
do the same with their lists when they focus on email address verification. There are tools that help you catch
things like fake contact information or typos in email addresses so they never make it on your list (or get fixed
before they’re added).

Some tools validate emails at signup while others examine the entire list and look for problematic contacts.
Our survey found that 24.4% of respondents take advantage of Real-time verification at signup and another
14% use Bulk verification tools. Only 11.4% of senders are using Both bulk and real-time tools.

58
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

But perhaps most surprisingly, more than 50% of the senders we surveyed say they are Not using verifica-
tion tools at all. That’s going to make it a lot harder to keep your list clean, and your sender reputation could
suffer along with your email engagement metrics.

14.1+24.5+11.450.1F
What kinds of tools do you use for email address verification?

Bulk list verification tool

14.1%

Not using verification tools

Real-time verification at signup
50.1%
24.4%

Both bulk and real-time tools

11.4%

When you’re consistently validating emails at signup, you can have more confidence in the quality of your
list as it grows. Plus, real-time verification decreases the need for manual list hygiene and bulk verification.
Still, there’s value in being able to validate both individual signups and your entire list.

“Real-time verification lets you plug in an API wherever you have

forms collecting contacts. What this does is it checks emails as
they come in and validates them, including for things like spelling
mistakes and high-risk addresses. Bulk verification can be very
useful if you’re aware of questionable list building practices or a
lack of list hygiene in the past. It’s also a good tool to use when
you start a new job or inherit a list and need to be sure it’s clean.”

Natalie Hays, Product Marketing Manager, Mailgun by Sinch

59
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

When filtering these survey results by sending volume, it’s clear that high-volume senders are more likely to
use automated tools for list hygiene. Those with the highest send volumes are more likely to use both types
of tools, and those with the lowest send volumes are most likely to say they are Not using verification tools.

Monthly send volume comparison:

What kinds of tools do you use for email address verification?

24.3%

16.8%
Bulk list verification tool
15.9%

11.8%

18.4%

27.4%
Real-time verification at signup
21.9%

25.0%

22.4%

13.5%
Both bulk and real-time tools
14.8%

8.8%

34.9%

42.3%
Not using verification tools
47.3%

54.4%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

More than 1 million emails 100,000 to 1 million emails

50,000 to 99,999 emails Fewer than 50,000 emails

The bottom line is that list hygiene and proper acquisition practices lead to better email deliverability.
That’s because it ensures you’re only sending to valid contacts and people who’ve actively opted-in to hear
from you. When you automate list hygiene with helpful tools, it not only supports your sender reputation, but
it also makes the job a lot less time consuming.

60
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 5: List building and hygiene

Future-proofing customer data with email validations

Find out how automating the process of email verification

protects the integrity of your data while improving
deliverability, engagement, and sales. Check out this
discussion with Gavin Sherry and Nick Schafer.

Watch Now

61
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 6: Best practices for better deliverability

PA R T 6

Best practices for better deliverability

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this report, including expert advice and guidelines for achieving high deliver-
ability. Let’s review 12 of the most important best practices for reaching the inbox and avoiding the dreaded
spam folder.

1. Choose the right email infrastructure

Deliverability starts at square one. That includes the servers, domains, and IP addresses used for your email
sending infrastructure.

Perhaps the biggest decision you’ll make is whether to use a shared or dedicated sending IP. Dedicated
IPs may be a necessity for high-volume senders. Remember that the behavior of other senders on a shared
IP may affect your deliverability. With a dedicated IP, you only have yourself to blame for deliverability issues.

More about email infrastructure

2. Warm up new IPs and domains before you start sending

Without a sending history, mailbox providers may be suspicious of emails coming from a brand-new sending
domain or IP. You need to take things slow at the start and ramp up to high-volume sending.

Be sure to warm up IPs and domains, which allows you to establish credibility with receiving mail serv-
ers. Without a proper warm-up period, you may experience deliverability issues such as throttling, greylisting,
or outright blocking of your messages.

Find out how domain/IP warm-up works

3. Separate transactional and marketing messages

If automated transactional emails are a crucial part of your program, consider separating these messages on
their own IP addresses or subdomains. This protects them from being associated with marketing emails that
have a reputation for being more likely to get filtered into spam.

People expect transactional emails to arrive in a timely manner and land in their inboxes where they’re
easy to find. These communications are an important part of the customer experience, and their deliverabil-
ity should be a priority.

More on transactional email deliverability

62
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 6: Best practices for better deliverability

4. Achieve delivery rates above 95%

While the delivery rate metric is only one of many ways to measure deliverability, it’s a good starting point.
Average delivery rates could be as low as 80% to 85%, but you should aim for better than average.

Transactional email delivery rates should be near 99% while marketing emails should try to achieve deliv-
ery rates as close to 95% as possible. A sudden drop in the delivery rate could indicate your emails are being
blocked.

More on deliverability metrics

5. Test and monitor inbox placement

The inbox placement rate is a measurement that can tell you the most about deliverability. It measures the
percentage of delivered emails that actually land in the inbox (not spam). But many email sending platforms
lack this sort of data.

Find a service that helps you with seed testing and provides inbox placement reports. This will give you
detailed insights into how major mailbox providers filter your messages.

More on improving inbox placement

6. Track email engagement over time

Trends in metrics such as opens and clicks are important to monitor, and they can help you identify deliver-
ability issues.

A dip in engagement may mean more emails are landing in spam and you need to make changes. Higher
levels of engagement prove you’re delivering quality content to the right people and that your growing list of
contacts is valid and healthy.

Get key learnings from a global email engagement study

7. Understand your sender reputation

Engagement rates are one of many things mailbox providers evaluate when scoring your sender reputation.
They’ll also pay attention to unsubscribes, spam complaints, and whether you’re sending mail to inactive and
non-engaged contacts – just to name a few factors.

Senders with a good reputation always put subscribers first. Use services like Google Postmaster tools and
find platforms that integrate with sender reputation tracking tools to better understand your sender reputation.

Get tips to improve sender reputation

63
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 6: Best practices for better deliverability

8. Monitor blocklists
Landing on a blocklist could be a huge problem, or it may barely impact email deliverability. The most import-
ant blocklists to avoid are run by Spamhaus.

Blocklist monitoring alerts you when your messages are being blocked so you can start the delisting pro-
cess as soon as possible. You can also adjust your sending strategy to reduce any negative impact on the
business. That could include temporarily moving a mail stream to a different sending IP to keep messages
flowing during remediation.

More on what to do if you're blocklisted

9. Use strong email authentication

Mailbox providers have the tough job of identifying legitimate mail and separating it from unsolicited spam
and malicious messages. You can help by using email authentication protocols that verify you are the autho-
rized sender and not a bad actor.

While SPF and DKIM cover the basics, you can strengthen your authentication using DMARC. But make
sure you eventually enforce DMARC with a policy of either reject or quarantine.

Get an overview of email authentication

10. Implement safe list building strategies

Purchasing email addresses or harvesting them from around the web is how spammers conduct list building.
If you don’t want to land in spam, don’t do these things.

Legitimate senders who prioritize deliverability are careful about who gets added to their list. Consider
using a double opt-in process for new subscribers and use a sunset policy to identify inactive or disengaged
contacts over time.

Get advice on growing your email list

11. Segment subscribers by engagement

Pay attention to the cues subscribers are giving you. If there are contacts who are less likely to engage, maybe
they only need to receive your most important marketing messages.

Manage your list by creating different segments for active and inactive subscribers based on their levels
of engagement. This turns segmentation into a strategy for both marketing and deliverability purposes. You
can even segment new subscribers from the start until you find out if they’re going to be engaged or not.

Find out more about strategic engagement segmentation

64
State of email deliverability 2023 | Part 6: Best practices for better deliverability

12. Take advantage of email verification tools

Your deliverability strategy starts with the signup form. If you can verify the validity of new contacts before
you start sending to them, email list hygiene becomes much easier.

For real-time verification, look for a service that uses cached send data. That’s much faster and more reli-
able than the broken SMTP handshake method used by many email validation services. Bulk email verifica-
tion is also useful if you ever need to evaluate the quality of your entire list.

More on what to look for in a verification tool

“If you’re not following best practices for email deliverability, it’s going to
catch up with you eventually. Once you’ve invested in the right infrastructure,
authentication, and marketing technology, focus on maintaining good list
hygiene while delivering high-quality, relevant content to engaged subscribers.”

Kate Nowrouzi, VP, Deliverability and Product Strategy, Mailgun by Sinch

65
State of email deliverability 2023 | Conclusion: Deliverability: Why IT and marketing need to team up

CONCLUSION

Deliverability: Why IT and

marketing need to team up

The IT crowd and the marketing team have different points of view, goals, and responsibilities. While IT profes-
sionals are working to keep technology running smoothly, marketers are working to reach people.

Email deliverability is one area in which the worlds of IT and marketing intersect. The efforts and failures
of one department will inevitably affect the other. So, these teams and individuals are going to need to work
together.

• IT professionals make email infrastructure decisions for different types of mail, which could impact
deliverability if technical mistakes are made or if they hire the wrong technology partner.

• Marketing teams oversee list building practices that could lead to high engagement or destroy a brand’s
sender reputation with mailbox providers.

• Technical teams are responsible for setting up and testing email authentication protocols that make the
inbox a safer place by making it easier for mailbox providers to identify spam.

• Email marketers lead strategies surrounding important sending practices. That includes segmenting
disengaged contacts and delivering relevant content to the right people at the right time.

There are two sides to the email deliverability coin. If you want to consistently reach the inbox, you need a solid
understanding of both the marketing and technical aspects. Deliverability has a direct impact on your email
ROI. To get the most out of this communication, you need to develop a strategy for your organization. To do
that, you need the right knowledge, tools, and technology partners.

“Meeting in the middle and bringing technical teams and email

marketers together is what helps you be successful because you’re
able to have your marketing team meet their goals while making
sure it’s done in a proper manner that supports deliverability.”

Ashley Rodriguez, Deliverability Engineer, Mailgun by Sinch

66
State of email deliverability 2023 | How we can help

How we can help

Mailgun by Sinch is an email platform with solutions for both technical users and marketing teams. Develop-
ers love our flexible email sending API, and marketers can easily create campaigns with our drag-and-drop
email template builder.

Mailgun also offers industry-leading ways to optimize email deliverability with a suite of tools and expert
support:

Inbox Placement Testing from Mailgun by Sinch gives you unprecedented insights into where your
messages land. Use it to catch deliverability problems before they impact your business. This fea-
ture also includes checks on the status of email authentication protocols.

Email Verification gives you effective ways to validate and optimize new and existing contact data.
Make sure new subscribers enter valid addresses with real-time verification at signup and use full
list verifications for overall hygiene.

Reputation Monitoring includes a variety of valuable features. Monitor for spam traps and block-
lists. Get notified when your IP is listed so you can take immediate action. Review Bounce Classi-
fications to understand why messages aren’t delivered. Plus, integrate Mailgun with Google Post-
master Tools and Microsoft SNDS to keep tabs on your reputation with Gmail and Outlook.

Email Previews show you how 100+ different email clients and devices render your marketing
emails. Notice a problem? Adjust the code before you hit send to be sure campaigns display as
expected and subscribers can easily engage.

Deliverability Services from Mailgun by Sinch puts an expert on your team. Get a custom deliv-
erability strategy for your organization, including monthly reports on email program health and
performance.

Not using Mailgun by Sinch to send and receive emails? Not a problem. You can use most solutions from Mail-
gun to optimize deliverability with any email service provider.

Check Out Mailgun’s Deliverability Offerings

67
 State of email deliverability 2023 | About this survey

About this survey

During May of 2023, Mailgun by Sinch surveyed its customers as well as email senders from its sister brands,
Mailjet by Sinch and Email on Acid by Sinch. The survey collected data and insights concerning the email
deliverability knowledge and practices of senders around the world.

More than 1,980 individuals completed the survey. Respondents were invited to participate via email mes-
sages as well as in-app communications. They were also incentivized to participate by the chance to win a
$100 Amazon gift card, which was awarded to one random customer. See below for further information on
respondent demographics. Due to rounding, the sum of percentages in certain survey results may exceed or
fall short of 100% by a difference of 0.1%.

Regional Monthly email send volumes

• United States: 22.5% • Fewer than 50,000 emails: 64.3%

• France: 18.4% • 50,000 to 99,999 emails: 14.2%

• India 4.8% • 100,000 to 1 million emails: 13.8%

• United Kingdom 4.1% • More than 1 million emails: 7.7%

• All other regions: 50.2%

Business size Job title

• 10 or fewer employees: 50.6% • Software developer: 18.6%

• 11 to 50 employees: 24.8% • IT professional: 15.4%

• 51 to 500 employees: 16.2% • Small business owner: 14%

• 501 to 1,000 employees: 3.3% • Marketing leadership: 10%

• 1,001 to 5,000 employees: 2.8% • Email/digital marketer: 8.7%

• More than 5,000 employees: 2.4% • C-suite executive: 8.0%

• Director/VP of product: 7.0%

Business type
• Freelancer: 6.9%
• B2C: 28.4% • Product management: 6.6%
• B2B: 34.4% • Email deliverability specialist: 4.2%
• Both B2B and B2C: 37.2% • Reliability engineer: 0.6%

68
 Over 100,000 companies worldwide use Mailgun by Sinch to create elegant email
experiences for their customers through world-class infrastructure. Brands like
Microsoft, Lyft, and Etsy trust Mailgun’s innovative technology and reliable
infrastructure to send billions of emails every year. Built with development
teams in mind, Mailgun makes sending, receiving, and tracking
emails effortless for email senders of all sizes.

Mailgun was founded in 2010 as a response to the lack of developer-friendly, API-

based email services. Since then, Mailgun has joined Sinch, a leading Communication
Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider, to become the developer-first email solution
for their global customer base. GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC I & II compliant, Mailgun aims
to provide the best email service possible with the utmost security and privacy.

For more information, please visit mailgun.com.