What is delivery rate?
Delivery rate indicates the percentage of emails that are actually delivered to the recipient's inbox compared to those that were sent.
A delivery rate of 99% means that 99% of all sent emails ended up in the recipient's inbox.
Delivery rate is used in email marketing — for example, when sending newsletters — alongside KPIs such as open rate, CTR, unsubscribe rate, etc., to evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing.
Read more in depth about email delivery here
How do you calculate the delivery rate?
The delivery rate for your email marketing is calculated by dividing the number of emails sent minus bounces by the number of emails sent. This gives you the number of sent emails that were received.
How to calculate delivery rate
Delivery rate = (Number of emails sent - Number of bounces) / Number of emails sent x 100
For example, if you sent 1,000 emails and 10 bounced: 1000-10=990. This is divided by 1000 and multiplied by 100: 990/1000*100=99%. That gives a delivery rate of 99%.
You will often find the exact delivery rate in the email marketing system you are using.
What is a good delivery rate?
You should always aim for as high a delivery rate as possible. However, it is rarely possible to reach 100%, as commercial emails can end up in spam, the recipient may have entered their email incorrectly, and similar issues.
A rule of thumb for a good delivery rate is 95%. We typically see that the delivery rate for email marketing averages between 88–99%.
Fortunately, there are some tips and tricks below on how you can improve (i.e. increase) your delivery rate. It essentially comes down to reducing the bounce rate:
4 Tips to improve your delivery rate and reduce your bounce rate.
- Double opt-in recipients: Ensures you have engaged recipients and correct email addresses.
- Exclude 100% unengaged recipients: For example, by excluding people who have not clicked in any emails for 12 months.
- Review and clean your lists on an ongoing basis: To ensure you don't have outdated email addresses, etc. on your recipient list.
- Do everything you can to keep your emails out of spam.
Would you like concrete advice on how to improve your delivery rate and email marketing in general? Contact us at tel. 60 40 10 06 for a no-obligation chat.
You can also read our introduction to the benefits of email marketing here.
Do you want to improve your delivery rate and optimise your email marketing?
Contact us at 30 12 42 72 for a no-obligation chat about how we can help you optimise your strategy.
