What is the average inbox placement rate?
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Most senders assume their email arrives. On average, a fair share of it doesn't.
Validity's 2025 Email Deliverability Benchmark (published March 2025) found that 83.5% of legitimate marketing email reached the inbox worldwide in 2024. 6.7% landed in spam, and 9.8% went missing. In the report's own words: "One in six legitimate marketing emails fails to reach the inbox." The edition before, covering 2022 data, reported 84.8% inbox, 6.1% spam and 9.1% missing.
Keep in mind how it was measured. The figures come from seed addresses that Validity's customers use to test their campaigns across hundreds of mailbox providers and spam filters, from opted-in senders only, as a snapshot in time. Seed addresses have no engagement history, so they show where mail lands for a test panel, not what your own list, with its own mix of engaged and quiet people, would get.
So how does yours compare? A good inbox rate is 85% or higher, and above 90% you're doing well. Nobody hits 100%.
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