• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 8, 2024

Undelivered emails cost U.S. brands a massive $59.5 billion per year, according to a new analysis from Mailtrap. 

What is your share of this hit? Broken down, the cost is $164 million daily, $1.1 billion weekly and $4.9 billion monthly. 

To come up with these sums, Mailtrap analyzed the relation between recent data on average email deliverability, average daily revenue per sent email and average number of emails sent every day, based on internal and outside studies.  

“If we now take the daily number of emails sent and multiply it by the average revenue per email, we get a $1.067 billion of potential daily revenue,” writes Dzenana Kajtaz, a technical writer at Mailtrap. 

Kajtaz adds that “15.4% of the emails used in that calculation don’t ever reach the inbox (average deliverability is 84.6%, remember), meaning that email senders have a combined daily loss of $164+ million.”  

Of course, it depends on the business you’re in. The average email delivery rate is 84.6%, but it varies by industry:

• Real estate — 97.1%
• Media & internet — 94.9%
• Travel & hospitality — 94.5%
• Holding companies — 91.6%
• Construction — 90.9% 
• Health care — 89.8%
• Consumer Services — 89.7%
• Education — 89.5%
• Software — 89.1% 
• Retail — 87.7%
• Manufacturing — 84.7% 
• Nonprofit organizations — 83.5%
• Business services — 83.4%
• Telecoms — 80.8% 
• Finance & insurance — 80%

Now let’s look at the aggregate financial cost by industry: 

• Finance & insurance: $213,400,000
• Telecoms: $204,864,000
• Business services: $177,122,000
• Nonprofit organizations: $176,055,000
• Manufacturing: $163,251,000
• Retail: $131,241,000
• Software: $116,303,000
• Education: $112,035,000
• Consumer services: $109,901,000
• Health care: $108,834,000
• Construction: $97,097,000
• Holding companies: $89,628,000
• Travel & hospitality: $58,685,000
• Media & internet: $54,417,000
• Real estate: $30,943,000 

There’s no great mystery as to the cause of these losses. Mailtrap blames: 

• Poor or damaged sender reputation 
• Email security 
• Poor email list management
• Email service provider spam filters
• Spammy content 
• Inconsistent sending volumes and schedules 
• Poorly managed email service. 

What should you do? Mailtrap recommends an email deliverability audit to uncover the key issues, then creation of an improvement plan.