Inbox Placement
There’s a lot more to email marketing than simply writing an email and hitting send. In fact, sometimes the success of your email campaigns might not even be 100% in your control.
How is that possible? Inbox placement.
In this post we will share the importance of inbox placement, what it is, and how it’s measured so that you can send your emails with confidence.
What is Inbox Placement
Inbox placement measures whether or not your email reaches your recipient’s primary inbox or not.
This overlooked but important aspect of email marketing is gaining importance as email clients like Gmail continue to filter more and more emails away from the coveted primary folder.
It's a crucial metric that impacts the overall visibility and effectiveness of your email campaigns.
The importance of Inbox Placement
Understanding and optimizing for inbox placement is crucial for any email marketing strategy. It's no longer enough to simply send emails — it's about ensuring those emails are actually seen by your audience.
Inbox placement has understandably grown in importance and will only continue to do so as the major email clients tighten up their inboxes in the name of their users (your recipient’s) privacy and overall email experience.
Here are the major reasons why inbox placement is important:
Increased Visibility and Engagement: Emails that land in the primary inbox are far more likely to be seen, opened, and engaged with by recipients. If your email is placed in the spam or promotions folder, it's less likely to be noticed, which will significantly reduce engagement rates.
Measures Email Deliverability: Inbox placement is a key indicator of email deliverability. It tells you if your emails are successfully navigating through various spam filters and reaching the inbox. This is crucial because even if an email is technically 'delivered' (not bounced), it doesn't mean it's reached the primary inbox.
Affects Sender Reputation: Consistently good inbox placement can improve your sender reputation. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) track how recipients interact with your emails. If your emails are frequently marked as spam or ignored, ISPs may start to place your emails in spam or promotions folders.
Ensures ROI of Email Campaigns: Email marketing typically has a high return on investment (ROI), but this is contingent on your emails actually being seen.
Avoids Wasted Resources: When emails are not placed in the inbox, the resources spent on creating and sending these emails are wasted. This includes the time and effort spent on designing, writing, and strategizing these email campaigns.
Ultimately, the success of an email marketing campaign is largely determined by how many people see and interact with your emails. Good inbox placement ensures that your emails are reaching your audience, which is crucial for achieving the objectives of your campaign.
Measuring Inbox Placement
Measuring inbox placement is actually quite simple.
It comes down to determining the percentage of your emails that are successfully delivered to the recipient's primary inbox, as opposed to being filtered into spam or other secondary folders.
This is called the Inbox Placement Rate (IPR).
IPR is calculated by dividing the total number of emails that reach the primary inbox by the total number of emails delivered. For instance, if you send 100 emails and 80 reach the primary inbox, your IPR is 80%.
Simple, right?
As for tracking your IPR, you can indirectly get a feel for how your emails are performing from engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates. A sudden drop in these metrics could indicate a problem with inbox placement, as emails that don't reach the inbox are less likely to be opened or clicked.
If you’re looking for something more technical there are also various tools and services available that can help you track your inbox placement. These tools make an educated guess by sending test emails to a network of seed addresses and then report on which folders these emails end up in.
Note: it’s impossible for these tools to be 100% accurate and it’s important to consistently monitor your open and click-through rates to keep a true pulse on inbox placement.
Inbox Placement vs Email Delivery
Inbox placement and email delivery are two related but slightly different concepts in email marketing.
We highlighted above that inbox placement confirms not only that the email was delivered but also which folder it ultimately landed in.
Where email delivery differs is that it is simply the process of an email successfully reaching the recipient's email server.
When an email is sent, it first passes through various checks by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email service providers. If it passes these checks, it's considered delivered.
However, email delivery doesn't specify where the email actually ends up. It simply confirms that the email hasn't bounced back and has reached the server associated with the recipient's email address.
Key takeaways
Inbox placement measures whether or not your email reaches your recipient’s primary inbox or not.
Inbox placement is getting more and more important over time as email clients (like Gmail) begin to divert more email outside of the primary inbox to folders like promotions or spam.
Tracking your Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) is quite easy. Simply divide the number of emails that reach the primary inbox by the total number of emails delivered.
Inbox placement and email delivery are similar but different in that inbox placement actually tracks the final destination of your email.
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There’s a lot more to email marketing than simply writing an email and hitting send. In fact, sometimes the success of your email campaigns might not even be 100% in your control.
How is that possible? Inbox placement.
In this post we will share the importance of inbox placement, what it is, and how it’s measured so that you can send your emails with confidence.
What is Inbox Placement
Inbox placement measures whether or not your email reaches your recipient’s primary inbox or not.
This overlooked but important aspect of email marketing is gaining importance as email clients like Gmail continue to filter more and more emails away from the coveted primary folder.
It's a crucial metric that impacts the overall visibility and effectiveness of your email campaigns.
The importance of Inbox Placement
Understanding and optimizing for inbox placement is crucial for any email marketing strategy. It's no longer enough to simply send emails — it's about ensuring those emails are actually seen by your audience.
Inbox placement has understandably grown in importance and will only continue to do so as the major email clients tighten up their inboxes in the name of their users (your recipient’s) privacy and overall email experience.
Here are the major reasons why inbox placement is important:
Increased Visibility and Engagement: Emails that land in the primary inbox are far more likely to be seen, opened, and engaged with by recipients. If your email is placed in the spam or promotions folder, it's less likely to be noticed, which will significantly reduce engagement rates.
Measures Email Deliverability: Inbox placement is a key indicator of email deliverability. It tells you if your emails are successfully navigating through various spam filters and reaching the inbox. This is crucial because even if an email is technically 'delivered' (not bounced), it doesn't mean it's reached the primary inbox.
Affects Sender Reputation: Consistently good inbox placement can improve your sender reputation. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) track how recipients interact with your emails. If your emails are frequently marked as spam or ignored, ISPs may start to place your emails in spam or promotions folders.
Ensures ROI of Email Campaigns: Email marketing typically has a high return on investment (ROI), but this is contingent on your emails actually being seen.
Avoids Wasted Resources: When emails are not placed in the inbox, the resources spent on creating and sending these emails are wasted. This includes the time and effort spent on designing, writing, and strategizing these email campaigns.
Ultimately, the success of an email marketing campaign is largely determined by how many people see and interact with your emails. Good inbox placement ensures that your emails are reaching your audience, which is crucial for achieving the objectives of your campaign.
Measuring Inbox Placement
Measuring inbox placement is actually quite simple.
It comes down to determining the percentage of your emails that are successfully delivered to the recipient's primary inbox, as opposed to being filtered into spam or other secondary folders.
This is called the Inbox Placement Rate (IPR).
IPR is calculated by dividing the total number of emails that reach the primary inbox by the total number of emails delivered. For instance, if you send 100 emails and 80 reach the primary inbox, your IPR is 80%.
Simple, right?
As for tracking your IPR, you can indirectly get a feel for how your emails are performing from engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates. A sudden drop in these metrics could indicate a problem with inbox placement, as emails that don't reach the inbox are less likely to be opened or clicked.
If you’re looking for something more technical there are also various tools and services available that can help you track your inbox placement. These tools make an educated guess by sending test emails to a network of seed addresses and then report on which folders these emails end up in.
Note: it’s impossible for these tools to be 100% accurate and it’s important to consistently monitor your open and click-through rates to keep a true pulse on inbox placement.
Inbox Placement vs Email Delivery
Inbox placement and email delivery are two related but slightly different concepts in email marketing.
We highlighted above that inbox placement confirms not only that the email was delivered but also which folder it ultimately landed in.
Where email delivery differs is that it is simply the process of an email successfully reaching the recipient's email server.
When an email is sent, it first passes through various checks by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email service providers. If it passes these checks, it's considered delivered.
However, email delivery doesn't specify where the email actually ends up. It simply confirms that the email hasn't bounced back and has reached the server associated with the recipient's email address.
Key takeaways
Inbox placement measures whether or not your email reaches your recipient’s primary inbox or not.
Inbox placement is getting more and more important over time as email clients (like Gmail) begin to divert more email outside of the primary inbox to folders like promotions or spam.
Tracking your Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) is quite easy. Simply divide the number of emails that reach the primary inbox by the total number of emails delivered.
Inbox placement and email delivery are similar but different in that inbox placement actually tracks the final destination of your email.