Email Deliverability Is High, So Check Engagement Too

Inbox delivery is no longer the scarce part of email for most senders. Published 2024 benchmarks show delivery rates near 98 percent, while click rates fell in several markets, so landing in the inbox does not guarantee that anyone acts on the message. Treat deliverability as a floor and measure engagement as the result.

Does high delivery mean email campaigns still perform?

Not necessarily. The DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2025 states that delivery rates rose to 98% in 2024, with the B2C sector reaching 99.2%. In the same report, open rates increased to 35.9% and unique click rates reached 2.3%, based on anonymised data from seven UK email service providers (DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2025).

This report is published in partnership with Marigold, which sells email marketing software. Read it as an industry benchmark produced with a vendor partner, not as an independent finding.

The gap between delivery and clicks is the point to watch. A campaign can reach the inbox and still produce few clicks, so delivery figures alone cannot tell a founder whether outreach is working.

How far have click rates fallen in retail campaigns?

In the GDMA International Email Benchmark 2025, Dutch retail campaigns saw click to open rate fall 4 percentage points to 8.2% and click through rate fall 2.2 percentage points to 3.8% since 2022. Globally, the benchmark reports a stable acceptance rate of 98.7% and a unique open rate of 32.5% since 2022, while recipients are clicking less (GDMA International Email Benchmark 2025).

The same benchmark notes that large, promotion-driven batches are a weak fit for engagement. Its figures are for retail mailings, so B2B founders should treat them as a signal about relevance rather than a direct forecast for their own list.

What the two benchmarks can and cannot show together

The DMA and GDMA reports use different metrics, samples and definitions, so they cannot be combined into one number. Taken together, they suggest a tentative hypothesis: delivery rates may stay high while engagement declines, which means inbox placement alone does not guarantee campaign performance. This is a hypothesis to test in your own data, not a confirmed trend.

What authentication should a sending domain have before outreach?

NIST SP 800-177 Rev. 1 recommends SPF, DKIM and DMARC as mechanisms for authenticating a sending domain in support of SMTP and DNS. It also recommends Transport Layer Security with certificate authentication for email transmission security (NIST SP 800-177 Rev. 1).

The guideline is written for federal IT systems but notes that it will also be useful for small or medium sized organisations. Confirm these records with whoever manages your mail domain before you change your sending volume.

What Scout's data shows

These figures describe the mail providers that receive email at companies Scout researched for its users. They are not a sample of all businesses.

• Population: Company email domains with a receiving mail server that Scout classified from public MX records
• Population size: 339
• As of: 2026-11-06
• Method: The MX records of each domain were resolved and classified by the provider host they point to; the latest check per domain counts.
• Limitation: The companies are the ones Scout researched for its users, mostly B2B firms in the markets those users target, so the shares describe that set and not every business. A security gateway in front of Google or Microsoft is counted as the gateway.

Figures:

• Google Workspace: 17.7% (60 of 339)
• Microsoft 365: 44.2% (150 of 339)
• Security gateway (Proofpoint, Mimecast, Barracuda): 17.4% (59 of 339)
• Other (Zoho, relay services, self-hosted): 20.6% (70 of 339)

Method and limitations

This page uses three primary sources retrieved in November 2026: the DMA Email Benchmarking Report 2025, the GDMA International Email Benchmark 2025, and NIST SP 800-177 Rev. 1. Benchmark figures come from anonymised data supplied by participating email service providers and are not representative of all senders. Part of the DMA report sits behind a membership login, so this page relies on the publicly visible summary.

The benchmarks cannot show why an individual campaign succeeds or fails, and the Scout figures describe only the companies Scout researched.

Our take

Our view is that founder-led teams should stop reading inbox delivery as proof of outreach quality. The benchmarks point to high delivery alongside weaker clicks, so the useful question is whether each message gives a specific reason to reply. Stop sending the same generic sequence to every account. Start by checking that your sending domain has the authentication NIST describes, then measure replies and clicks rather than delivery alone. Among the Scout figures, Microsoft 365 is the most common provider at 44.2% of researched domains, so a sequence that works for that set should be tested against your own list before scaling.

Where Scout fits

Scout suits founder-led sales teams that run outbound to B2B accounts and want each account to come with a reason, a source, a verified contact and a first line. Scout researches B2B accounts showing fresh public buying signals and hands outbound teams those details. Scout also offers 5 free researched leads, so a team can judge the output on its own accounts.

Another approach fits better if your main problem is authentication failures, bounces or list hygiene. This page makes no claim that Scout changes DNS records, authentication or inbox placement, so fix those with your mail administrator first.

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