Deliverability score
What is Deliverability score?
A deliverability score is a single number, usually 0-100, that estimates how likely an email is to reach its recipient's inbox. It is calculated from a mix of signals — message content (spam-trigger keywords, shortened links, excessive punctuation), the sending domain's or IP's current reputation, and that sender's recent bounce and spam-complaint rates — so a sender can flag and fix a message likely to be filtered or routed to spam before a campaign goes out.
More detail
Email platforms typically compute the score from two parts: a content-risk check that lints the message body for spam-like patterns, and a sender-reputation component built from the domain's and sending IP's historical bounce, complaint, and engagement rates — so the same message text can score very differently depending on which sender it goes out under.
The score is advisory, not a guarantee: it flags outsized risk before a send so a sender can adjust wording, swap a link, or pause and clean up the list, but the receiving mailbox provider still makes the final inbox-versus-spam decision once the message is actually sent.
Frequently asked
- Is a deliverability score the same thing as a delivery rate?
- No. Delivery rate is the historical percentage of past emails receiving servers accepted. A deliverability score is a predictive, per-message estimate calculated before sending, generally combining content risk with the sending domain's recent bounce and complaint history to flag likely problems in advance rather than reporting what already happened.
- What makes an email score low?
- Common causes include spam-trigger content such as shortened links, excessive punctuation or capitalization, or flagged keywords or attachments; a sending domain or IP with a damaged reputation; or recent high bounce and complaint rates on that sender — the score aggregates whichever of those signals the platform can measure.
See also
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