Email Deliverability Explained for Sparkforge Senders

Email marketers throw the words delivered and deliverability around as if they mean the same thing. They do not. Sparkforge with Mailgun shows you both stats other tools hide, so you should know exactly what each one tells you.

Delivered vs. deliverability

Delivered

Delivered is the stat you can see in your Mailgun dashboard and in the Sparkforge email stats view. It means the recipient mail server accepted the message — inbox, spam, promotions, or otherwise. The opposite is undelivered (failed, bounced, or rejected). A healthy delivered rate sits at 98% or higher.

Deliverability

Deliverability is your inbox-placement rate: how much of your mail lands in the inbox versus spam, junk, promotions, or nowhere visible. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and Apple do not publish placement data, so no dashboard reports it. You influence it by controlling the inputs.

Factors that drive inbox placement

IP and domain reputation

Volume, consistency, and engagement (opens, clicks, replies, complaints, unsubscribes) carry the most weight. Reputation is built one send at a time.

Provider filtering

Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple each filter differently and publish nothing. What lands in Gmail can spam in Outlook.

Authentication

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC must be configured on your sending domain. Misconfigured MX records can send everything to spam or block delivery outright.

Domain age and TLD

New domains have no reputation, so warm them up slowly. Stick with trusted suffixes — .com, .co, .net, .org. Some TLDs trigger spam filters on day one.

Subject line and body

Words like free, click here, and opportunity, plus heavy punctuation, hurt placement. Removing one trigger word can move deliverability several percentage points.

Blacklists and links

Check your domain and IP against Spamhaus and MXToolbox. A single bad-reputation link in your signature can poison the whole email.

Text-to-HTML ratio

Aim around 60:40 in favor of text. Heavier HTML can win on conversions when your list is engaged — test it.

Volume and consistency

Spammers blast huge volume at once. Steady, predictable sending looks human. Match your send pattern to your real audience size.

What you can actually control

Authentication and setup get you into the inbox. Behavior — list hygiene, relevant content, steady volume, real engagement — keeps you there. Sparkforge plus Mailgun gives you full visibility into every stat so you can act on the inputs you control.