How Poor Email Deliverability is Costing E-Commerce Brands $100K

Wondering why your flash sale didn't bring in the revenue you expected? Or why your cart abandonment emails aren’t recovering as many sales as they used to?

This is a more common scenario than you might think. You craft the perfect email, hit send, and…crickets, not because customers don't care but because they never actually saw your message. 

Poor email deliverability is a leak in your revenue - money is silently draining away while you’re busy filling the top with more marketing efforts. 

The $100K Question: How Much Poor Email Deliverability is Costing E-Commerce?

Let’s break down how these deliverability problems are stealing your revenue:

1. Your Cart recovery emails are missing the target.

Those abandoned cart emails? They’re gold mines. They typically convert at 10-30% when they actually reach the inbox. 

Let’s do some quick math:

• Your store makes $500,000 in monthly sales.
• About 10% of that comes from cart recovery emails
• If your deliverability drops by just 20%, that’s $10,000 gone each month. 

That’s $120,000 per year….just from cart recovery emails alone. 

2. Your big sales announcements are getting muffled.

Picture this: You’re launching your biggest sale of the year, and you send an email to your 1M subscribers. 

• If 90% of those emails reach inboxes (good deliverability), that’s 900,000 potential shoppers.
• If only 60% of those emails reach inboxes (poor deliverability), that’s just 600,000 potential shoppers.

With a 2% conversion rate and a $50 average order, that 30% gap just costs you $30,000 in a single campaign.

3. Your customer relationships are fading.

If your “New Summer Collection” email hits the spam folder of a loyal customer who buys your products every once in a while and would totally buy sandals from you this summer season, might just buy from your competitor instead. 

A 5% decrease in repeat purchases might not sound like much, but spread that across your entire customer base, and you’re looking at tens of thousands lost in long-term revenue. 

4. You’re paying for marketing that’s not working.

You're paying good money for ineffective email marketing:

• Monthly fees for your email platform
• Team time spent creating those beautiful campaigns
• Ad dollars spent growing a list you can't effectively reach
  
  

Real Signs You Have an Email Deliverability Problem

How do you know if this is happening to you? Look for these warning signs:

• Your open rates have been steadily declining (especially if they're below 15%)
• Different email providers show wildly different results (like great open on Outlook but terrible on Gmail)
• Your click rates are dropping faster than your open rates
• Customers tell you they never received emails about your sale
• Your revenue per email sent is declining quarter over quarter

An apparel brand owner was puzzled about why their email revenue had dropped by 30% despite an increase in their subscriber list. It turns out that their authentication was broken after switching email providers, resulting in nearly half of their emails being filtered out.

How to Fix Your Deliverability (And Recover That Revenue)

Ready to plug that revenue leak? Here are the straightforward fixes:

1. Get Your Email Authentication In Order

Make sure your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are properly set up. If those terms sound like alphabet soup to you, that's okay – a good email specialist can fix this in about an hour.

2. Clean Up Your Email List

Remove subscribers who haven't opened in 3-6 months. Yes, your list will shrink, but your deliverability (and revenue) will improve. It's better to have 10,000 people who see your emails than 30,000 who don't.

3. Warm Up Any New Sending Domains

If you're using a new email domain or IP address, don't blast your whole list at once. Start with small sends to your most engaged folks, then gradually increase volume.

4. Make Your Emails Less "Salesy"

Balance your text-to-image ratio (aim for 60:40), tone down the promotional language, and create content that encourages replies and engagement.

5. Segment Based on Engagement

Send different emails to different audience segments based on their past behavior. Someone who clicks on every email deserves different treatment than someone who barely opens.

6. Test Before You Send

Use a tool like GlockApps or MailTester to check where your emails are landing before you send your big campaign.

Stop Losing $100K+ Today

Poor deliverability isn't just a technical problem – it's literally money disappearing from your business every single day.

The good news? Unlike many marketing challenges, deliverability issues usually have clear, fixable causes. And once you address them, the revenue impact is almost immediate.

BlueOshan's Email Deliverability experts can:

• Run a comprehensive deliverability audit of your current setup
• Fix technical authentication issues most marketers miss
• Help clean and segment your list for maximum inbox placement
• Set up monitoring to catch future issues before they cost you sales

Ready to plug the $100K leak in your e-commerce revenue? Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our team today.