What Our Deliverability Numbers Mean (and What They Don't)
WarmySender shows two different kinds of deliverability information, and they answer two different questions. It is easy to read one as the other, so here is exactly what each one measures.
Where to look: three places:
- The Inbox placement card on the campaign's own page. Open any email campaign and you will see an Inbox placement figure alongside your other campaign numbers. It is the share of your warm-up mail that reached the inbox rather than the spam folder over the last 7 days, counted across the mailboxes that this campaign sends from, and checked inside real mailboxes rather than estimated. Until enough warm-up mail has been checked for those mailboxes it says 'Not enough warm-up mail yet' instead of showing a figure, because a number built on a handful of messages would mislead you. Read it as the current reputation of the mailboxes behind this campaign — it is not a measurement of where any individual prospect's email landed.
- Analytics > Deliverability. The same measurement, one level deeper: the Inbox Rate Trend shows the direction of travel over time, and the Mailbox Health Matrix breaks it down mailbox by mailbox so you can see which sender is pulling the average down.
- The Warmup page. Each mailbox has its own Inbox Rate column, which is the quickest way to compare your mailboxes at a glance and to spot a new one that has not warmed up yet.
All three read the same underlying measurement, so they agree with each other; they differ only in how much detail they show and how much of your account they cover.
What the Deliverability tab measures:
The Inbox Rate Trend and Mailbox Health Matrix under Analytics > Deliverability are built entirely from warmup mail — the messages your mailboxes exchange with other verified mailboxes in the warmup network. Each day we check the receiving mailbox to see whether a warmup email arrived in the inbox or in the spam folder, and that becomes your inbox rate, spam rate and health score.
So those figures describe your sending account's reputation over time. A rising inbox rate means providers are treating mail from that mailbox more favourably. It is the number to watch before and while you run a campaign, and it is exactly what warmup exists to improve.
What those numbers do not tell you:
They do not tell you where a campaign email landed. A campaign email travels from your mailbox to a real prospect's mailbox, which we have no access to. Once the recipient's mail server accepts the message, whatever happens next — inbox, spam folder, or a category tab — happens inside an account we cannot see. That is a property of email itself, not a gap in your reporting.
One honest caveat about tabs: mail providers do not reveal which tab a message was filed under, so when a warmup email is sorted into Promotions or Updates we count it as inbox. Read 'inbox' as 'not in the spam folder' rather than 'in the Primary tab'.
What you can see for a campaign:
- Bounce Rate and Delivery rejection rate, on the campaign's own page.
- The reasons behind those rejections, grouped in plain language. They include 'Recipient mail server rejected as spam' and 'Your sending provider rejected the message as spam before it left your mailbox', alongside a missing address or an unreachable mail server. This is real spam feedback — it covers mail that was refused outright at the moment of sending, which we do see.
- Automatic protection. If every send in a campaign is being refused on content or policy grounds, WarmySender pauses the campaign so your prospect list is not used up, links you to how to fix it, and lets you restore the affected prospects once you have rewritten the message. Resuming is your call, not automatic.
- Opens, clicks and replies, which remain the most practical evidence that your mail is being read.
Why the two cannot be merged:
Warmup mail lands in mailboxes we can check, so we can report its folder. Campaign mail lands in mailboxes only your prospect can see. The first is a reputation gauge you can watch daily; the second is only visible to us up to the moment it is accepted or refused.
Checking placement yourself with a test send:
There is one thing you can do that no dashboard can do for you: look with your own eyes. Open the campaign, use Send test, and send the email to an address you own — ideally one at the same mail provider your prospects use, since that is the filter you actually care about. Then check both the inbox and the spam folder of that account.
The test arrives exactly as a prospect would receive it: the same subject line, the same opt-out footer, the same headers, and no test label of any kind. That is deliberate, because a message marked as a test is not the message being filtered — anything added to it would change the very thing you are trying to observe.
Treat the result as one honest data point rather than a score. It tells you where this message landed for one recipient at one provider on one day, which is genuinely useful when you are choosing between two subject lines or checking a new mailbox before you launch. It does not tell you what will happen across a thousand prospects — for that, watch the Inbox placement figure your warm-up mail produces.
A note on placement testing:
A separate class of tool estimates placement by mailing a panel of its own test addresses and reporting which folder each copy reached. WarmySender does not do that — there is no test panel and no test send — and such tools sit alongside warmup rather than replacing it. If you use one, read its result next to your warmup inbox rate: one estimates where a sample message lands, the other builds the reputation that decides where your real mail lands.
Frequently asked questions:
Where do I see my inbox placement on a campaign?
On the campaign's own page, in the Inbox placement card. It shows the last 7 days of warm-up mail from the mailboxes that campaign sends from, measured as inbox versus spam inside real mailboxes. If it says 'Not enough warm-up mail yet', warm-up has not yet produced enough checked mail for those mailboxes to report a fair figure — leave warmup running and it will fill in. For the mailbox-by-mailbox picture, follow the link to Analytics > Deliverability.
Does the test email land where the real one would?
It is the closest preview available. Send test now goes out exactly as a prospect would receive it — same subject, same opt-out footer, same headers, no test label — so where it lands in an inbox you own is a fair indication rather than an artificial one. It is still a single message to a single account, so read it alongside your Inbox placement figure rather than instead of it.
Why does my campaign not show a placement number yet?
Because placement is measured on warm-up mail, and there is not yet enough of it from that campaign's mailboxes. This is most common on a mailbox connected in the last few days. Keep warmup switched on and the figure appears once enough mail has been checked.
Can you tell me whether a specific prospect got my email in their inbox?
No, and neither can any other sending tool. Once the prospect's mail server accepts the message, what happens next takes place inside an account nobody but that person can see. What we can show you is whether the message was accepted or refused, whether it was opened or clicked, and how the mailbox that sent it is currently being treated by mail providers.