Deliverability: Reaching the inbox. What is email deliverability? Email deliverability is a crucial indicator in an email marketing strategy. The emails could be accessible, personal and designed beautifully, but not be delivered to the inbox. A sender reputation score determines whether the message is received in the inbox. Email deliverability measures the ability of sent emails to arrive in the recipient's inbox, as opposed to a spam folder. Bounced emails indicate a full inbox or a server issue, and poor deliverability is an indicator that emails are not being received. Email delivered rate, this metric, does not account for where the message lands in the inbox. This metric measures emails that did not bounce, but note that emails could land in the junk folder. Ohio State email sender reputation. What is email sender reputation? The email sender reputation is a score assigned by inbox providers to entities that send email. It is the measure of trustworthiness as a sender of email. Sender reputation scoring is similar to a credit score; like credit bureaus, inbox providers use scoring algorithms to determine the usefulness of an email's content and the validity of email addresses in a list. A low sender reputation score impacts the ability to deliver email. Emails reported as spam impact Ohio State's overall sender reputation. Common email types marked as spam are solicitations, invitations to events and messages from unknown senders. Low sender reputation may cause inbox providers to send messages to constituent's junk or spam folders, or simply not deliver the email at all.