Email deliverability used to be a technical issue. Today, it’s a strategic one.
Google and Yahoo are now enforcing stricter bulk-sender requirements — including authentication, low complaint thresholds, and clear unsubscribe options. Their goal: make inboxes safer. The result: senders who ignore deliverability best practices risk seeing messages deferred or rejected entirely.
If you’re already following authentication protocols and keeping your complaint rates below 0.1%, you’re on the right track. But even good senders can slip if they aren’t monitoring engagement or managing list hygiene.
Is your overall delivery below average (98%)? Are your open rates low (<14%)? Do you have corporate domains that are reporting 0 bounces, 0 opens, 0 clicks, 0 unsubscribes? Have recipients complained that they don’t see your emails?
Here’s how to strengthen your deliverability and engagement across your full email universe.
Step 1: Define Engagement
Before you can improve deliverability, you have to define what engagement means for your organization. Too many unengaged contacts receiving emails over time signals to mailbox providers that your messages may be unwanted — a common cause of poor inbox placement or even IP blocks.
A reliable baseline Omeda uses with clients looks like this:
- Engaged readers: Anyone who has received “X” emails in the last three months and opened or clicked at least one.
- Include new subscribers who joined in the last three months, even if they haven’t received enough messages yet.
For unengaged readers, simply flip that definition:
- Unengaged readers: Anyone who has received “X” emails in the last three months and hasn’t opened or clicked any.
- Exclude new subscribers so they’re not mistakenly flagged as inactive.
Because Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) inflates open rates, many senders now combine opens and clicks — or focus primarily on click data — to gauge true engagement. Omeda’s Client Success Managers can help you evaluate the best measurement approach for your list mix and goals.
Step 2: Target Your Audience Strategically
Inbox placement improves when more people engage with your emails. Engagement drives reputation, and reputation drives deliverability.
Start by segmenting your list:
- Send to your engaged audience first. Their higher open and click rates send positive signals to mailbox providers.
- Follow up separately with your less-engaged audience. You can use the same content, but by sending in batches, you prevent disengaged recipients from weighing down your overall metrics.
- Monitor complaint and bounce rates closely. If your complaint rate edges near 0.1% or your bounce rate exceeds 2%, it’s time to re-evaluate your data sources and sending cadence.
This approach helps you see where the strongest (and weakest) engagement pockets exist, making it easier to refine your content, cadence, and audience strategy.
Step 3: Develop Re-Engagement Efforts
You can segment unengaged readers out of your main sends, but without an ongoing re-engagement plan, you’ll lose inbox placement ground over time.
A good re-engagement workflow includes:
- A short, intentional campaign — two to three messages asking inactive readers if they still want to hear from you.
- Automated drip logic — Omeda’s marketing automation tool, for example, lets you set these campaigns to run continually in the background.
- A final suppression step — if contacts don’t re-engage, remove them. Continuing to send to chronically inactive addresses does more harm than good.
List hygiene isn’t glamorous, but it’s one of the fastest ways to protect sender reputation and improve inbox reach.
Step 4: Monitor and Maintain Deliverability Health
Improving deliverability isn’t a one-time project. It’s an ongoing process of watching your data and acting early. Omeda provides several reports that help teams track progress and spot red flags:
- Summary Stats Report: View monthly, quarterly, and annual trends in key metrics like delivery, opens, and clicks.
- Delivery by Receiving Domains Report: Identify corporate domains where messages aren’t being delivered (zeros across the board often indicate blocking).
- Email Benchmark Calculator: Compare your metrics against Omeda-wide averages to benchmark performance.
Together, these reports create an early-warning system for your email program.
Keep Deliverability a Leadership Priority
Good deliverability reflects good audience relationships. Maintaining authentication, monitoring complaint rates, and focusing on genuine engagement all contribute to stronger inbox placement — and ultimately, better results from every send.
If you’re an Omeda client, your Client Success Manager and the Deliverability Team can help you review your current performance and identify next steps.
If you’re exploring ways to improve your email performance, book a demo to see how Omeda supports enterprise-level deliverability and engagement.
