The Email Deliverability Roadmap: Getting More Opens, Clicks, and Sales

We’re sure you know what we mean when we say ‘sending a message is just half the battle’ especially if you are into email marketing or email outreach. The true struggle is making sure that message not only makes it into the recipient’s inbox but that it gets opened, read, and that it stirs the necessary action.

If your emails are not getting delivered into the inbox, the odds of generating leads, driving engagement and converting prospects simply go down. Deliverability impacts the complete email journey and the bottom line of your business.

So we created this roadmap designed to help senders optimize each stage of your email marketing journey. You’ll learn how to:

• Consistently land your emails in inboxes
• Boost your opens and clicks.
• Drive more conversions from cold emails

Key deliverability statistics to look at

For you to have an accurate idea of how effective your email marketing have been, it is essential you monitor crucial metrics across your email’s path. These are the numbers that provide insights about your email performance and where there is room for improvement.

Open rate

• This pertains to the percentage of recipients who opened your email.
• Consistently high open rates mean your emails are making it into the inbox successfully and that your subject lines make people want to read the rest of your message.
• Low open rates could mean your emails are not reaching the inbox, probably being rereouted to the  spam folder, or that you should sharpen your subject lines.

Click-through rate (CTR)

• This is the rate of the total recipients who open your email and click on your links.
• A high CTR means your emails are resonating with your audience to the point that they want to take action.
• A low CTR could mean your recipients are not really internalizing your email content.

Bounce rate

• This is the amount of emails that did not make it through or wasn’t given access to the recipient’s server.
• A high bounce rate might pertain to issues with list quality, bad email addresses, or even your email infrastructure.

🔖 Relevant Reading: Bounced Emails: Understanding Causes and Solutions for Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo

Spam complaint rate

• The spam complaint rate is the percentage of recipients who mark your email as spam.
• When recipients constantly tag your emails as spam, email service providers will take note of this pattern. They may decide to block you or reject your future emails to protect their users,
• High complaint rates damage sender reputation and can lead to blacklisting which can severely impact your deliverability in a negative way.

Conversion rate

The goal of outreach emails is to inspire the recipients to take action—whether it’s to book a call, sign up for a service, or avail a free trial. When you track conversion rates, you see the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the email in getting your target audience to the bottom of your sales funnel.

The roadmap to getting more open rates

Open rates are one of the most important metrics to email campaign success. After all, if your audience isn’t opening your emails, nothing else matters.

It shows how well you’re capturing your audience’s attention, and that’s why low open rates mean trouble. It’s not just about what you’re sending, but there’s also the possibility that your emails aren’t getting delivered at all. And if they don’t reach the inbox, then they won’t even stand a chance at getting opened.

When it comes to increasing your open rates, you’re going to want to look at deliverability from both a technical and content standpoint.

Technical best practices to ensure deliverability

1. Authenticate your emails. Your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records should be properly set up as they tell email providers you are a legitimate sender. (Read more: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC: What They Are and Why You Should Care)  
2. Maintain a clean email list. Email bounces go hand in hand with lists that are not updated. Regularly clean your email list to remove inactive or invalid email addresses. (Read more: 6 Must-Have Email List Scrubbing Tools for Spotless List Hygiene in 2025).
3. Avoid spam traps. These are valid email addresses that ESPs use to catch and punish spammers or those who buy lists.
4. Monitor blacklists. It’s now fairly easy to find out if your domain or IP address has been blacklisted by major spam filters. If you’re on a blacklist, ESPs are more likely to reject your emails. Of course, not all ESPs follow the same algorithm or criteria. (Read more: Are Blacklists Killing Your Emails? A Deep Dive into How They Influence Email Providers)
5. Warm up your domain. Often overlooked, the warmup process involves gradually increasing your sending volume to build trust with email service providers. This builds the foundation of your email infrastructure. (Read more: The Science and Process of Warming Up Newly Created Email Domains)

Content best practices to increase appeal

1. Craft compelling subject lines. The subject line is like your first impression once you’re in the inbox—item a person will read when they see your email in their inbox, so it had better be good. After all, 43% of recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. (Read more: 14 Tips For Writing An Excellent Email Subject Line + Examples) 
2. Add a personal touch. Even just adding the recipient’s name ocan already increase the chances of your email being opened. 
3. Segment and conquer. Instead of writing a generic message to everyone, segment your email list into demographics, interests or behaviors. With segmented campaigns leading to a 760% increase in revenue, you won’t want to skip this.
4. Test the timing of your emails to see when your audience tends to open them. A timely email can make all the difference in whether you’re spotted.
5. A/B test your subject lines. You can use A/B testing to compare different versions of your subject lines to see which is working best. You’ll be able to see what type of subject lines result in higher open rates.

The roadmap to getting more click-throughs

It’s one thing to open an email. It’s a different thing to actually do what the email wants you to do.

Click-through rates (CTR) tell the story of how well your email engages recipients beyond the open. Yes, getting your emails opened is an important first step. However in the end, your cold email campaign is only as good as its ability to drive action.

So what does it mean when someone does click on a link or CTA in your email? Simple—it means they are interested enough to learn more.

Here’s how you can boost click-through rates

1. Ensure mobile optimization. A huge percentage (50-60%) of emails are opened on mobile devices. Emails that are not mobile-friendly will miss out on potential clicks.
2. Avoid broken links. Fewer things are more frustrating to recipients than clicking on a link that doesn’t work. Make sure to weekly track and test all hyperlinks in your email copy to be sure that they will lead traffic to the right pages. Not only do broken links cause your CTR to plummet, but they can harm your sender reputation as well.
3. Don’t forget to use UTMs for tracking. You can pinpoint which email campaigns generate the most users so you can tweak your strategy accordingly.
4. Create strong Calls to Action (CTAs). Use action-oriented language like “Get Started,” “Learn More,” or “Claim Your Offer.”
5. Create engaging, relevant content. To increase your click-through rate, your content has to be what your audience wants. Generic messages won’t cut it. Focus on delivering actual value like useful and engaging content. This is also where segmentation comes into play because more personalized content is more likely to get clicks.

The roadmap to generating more sales via email outreach

The end-in-mind for email marketing, is to get sales—either through direct purchases, leads, or conversions. High conversion rates show your emails aren’t just hitting the inbox and not just being opened, but actually compelling people to take action. It means that you’re doing something (or a lot of somethings) right.

Low sales rates, however, mean that while people might be opening and engaging with your emails, they’re not converting well. It could be bad content, confusing CTAs, or off-target campaigns. To increase your ability to drive sales from email outreach, you need to start increasing the effectiveness of every part of the email journey, from deliverability to content strategy and the follow up process.

Recommended practices to increase sales from email campaigns

• Automate the process of following up. This can be done via cold email sequences. Automated follow up sequences can be used to nurture leads, remind people that you sell a particular product or service, and drastically increase sales conversions!
• Social proof sends trust signals. Social proof (which can be anything from testimonials, reviews, or case studies) make all the difference when it comes to earning a customer’s trust and convincing them to pull the trigger. Add some testimonials or a link to case studies to gain trust and push them to take action.
• Showcase benefits, not just features. Make your readers understand how your product can help them get rid of problems that they have. Employ copy that directly addresses their pain points and a solid value proposition that will incite them to take action.

Warmy: your partner in getting more opens, clicks, and sales

Warmy is an all-in-one email deliverability solution designed to provide everything you need to ensure your emails perform at their best. Yes, that includes getting more opens, clicks, and sales. Here’s how Warmy can help you boost your email campaign results:

Deliverability test + Domain Health Hub