One of our values at Kit is to work in public. We strive for transparency, which is why we share information that is typically kept private, such as our finances.
One commonly asked question by creators looking for a new email marketing platform is, “How is your email deliverability?”
Here is our monthly deliverability report to answer that question:
If you missed previous Deliverability reports, you can check them out below:
In May, Kit sent over 1 billion messages (1,091,267,528 to be exact).
When messages are sent, they can be delivered or they can bounce. For more details on how email deliverability operates, check out our blog post here. But for a little TLDR- The more messages delivered, the better!
It is inevitable for some messages to bounce due to invalid addresses, full mailboxes, etc., but a good delivery rate indicates healthy deliverability for Kit. We consider a system-wide delivery rate of 98% and above to be very healthy.
In May, our system-wide delivery rate was 98.9%
This high delivery rate indicates a healthy reputation for Kit, which gives our customers a solid foundation for their email deliverability. To get even more detailed about how well we’re performing, it helps to filter down by mailbox provider.
Here are the top 5 domains Kit sends to in terms of volume:
1. Gmail.com
Volume: 614 million messages
Delivery rate: 99.55%
2. Yahoo.com
Volume: 115 million messages
Delivery rate: 99.87%
3. Hotmail.com
Volume: 99 million messages
Delivery rate: 99.85%
4. AOL.com
Volume: 12 million messages
Delivery rate: 99.86%
5. Outlook.com
Volume: 12 million messages
Delivery rate: 99.87%
The average open rate of all emails sent through Kit was 32%.
Senders often ask how their open rates stack up to others. Truth is, open rates can vary greatly depending on your industry and audience type (B2B vs. freemail addresses, for example). However, here’s a general scale you can use to measure your performance:
I talk more about open rates and why they aren’t always reliable in this article.
Our system-wide complaint rate remained over 10x lower than industry standard
A complaint is when a subscriber marks a message as spam. An elevated complaint rate is a signal that the sender’s quality of mail isn’t good. We have a team dedicated to ensuring that the mail sent from Kit is wanted by the recipients.
In the email industry, a complaint rate less than 0.1% is seen as healthy. Kit’s complaint rate in May was 0.008%, which speaks to the high quality of mail sent by our customers and the healthy reputation of our infrastructure.
Deliverability tip of the month:
Be sure to keep your sending volume and frequency consistent. Mailbox providers are able to establish a solid sender reputation for you when your email sending patterns are predictable. However, if you suddenly send to a larger list than normal, or if you take a couple weeks or more off of sending to your list, this can cause deliverability problems. Sudden changes in volume and/or frequency can raise a red flag for mailbox providers and cause them to send more messages to spam, or bounce your messages.
Best practice: Avoid any sudden changes to the number of subscribers you email or the amount of time you go between sending emails. Keep your sending consistent for best deliverability results.
Industry news and Kit updates
We’re working on our inclusive language
We’ve officially changed “Blacklist” to “Blocklist” and “Whitelist” to “Allowlist” at Kit. Blacklist and Whitelist are email industry-standard terms that need to change.
We’ll continue to think critically about the language we use, and will work to ensure our terminology is inclusive and not rooted in racism.
The Deliverability Defined podcast is live!
Want to stay up-to-date with the information you need to reach the inbox of your subscribers? Be sure to subscribe to the Deliverability Defined podcast! For more information on where you can listen, or to submit a topic suggestion, head over to kit.com/features/deliverability.
