• by Ray Schultz , August 11, 2020

Inbox placement -- the number of emails that arrive in the inbox out of the total sent -- held steady at 83% in 2019, down from 85% in 2018, according to 2020 Email Deliverability Benchmark, a global study by Validity. 

The spam placement rate -- the number of emails that ended up in the spam folder out of the total sent -- averaged 7%. The missing rate -- the percentage of emails that have landed in neither box but have been deferred or blocked by the mailbox provider -- was 10%. 

North America was in line with the worldwide average for inbox delivery, at 83%. Its spam placement was 8% and the missing rate was 9%. 

Canada outperformed the U.S. and the global average, with an inbox placement rate of 89%. In contrast, the U.S. came in at 82% for the year-to-date inbox placement rate 

Europe saw an inbox placement rate of 84% for the year, compared with a rate of 86% in the first quarter.

The highest inbox delivery on the continent was achieved in Belgium and the Czech Republic — at 92% for each. 

However, the German delivery rate was only 74%, and Switzerland’ even lower: 67%. The rate for the UK was 87%.

Meanwhile, the overall placement rate for Asia was 84%.

The study notes that marketers have reevaluated their data practices to comply with the GDPR.

Validity studied 2 billion promotional email messages sent to consumers around the world between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019.