beehiiv, the newsletter publishing platform, added a report for Pro and Enterprise customers that breaks down sends, deliveries, bounce rates and open rates by inbox provider. According to beehiiv’s October 30 product update, the report appears in post analytics and compares the breakdown with the previous send. The first question to ask when looking at the report is whether the same provider got worse or whether the newsletter simply went to a different mix of readers.
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How the overall rate can rise while Gmail gets worse
Imagine two editions each go to 10,000 addresses. The first goes to 8,000 Gmail addresses and 2,000 addresses at another provider. At 98% and 99.5% delivery respectively, the two groups account for 7,840 and 1,990 deliveries. That is 9,830 deliveries overall, or 98.3%.
The second goes to 2,000 Gmail addresses and 8,000 addresses at the other provider. Gmail delivery drops to 96% while the other provider stays at 99.5%. The result is 1,920 Gmail deliveries plus 7,960 other deliveries, or 98.8% overall. The aggregate improves half a percentage point while Gmail deteriorates two points. These are illustrative numbers. The arithmetic shows how a different audience can make a real problem harder to see.
To put the two sends on a common footing, weight the second send’s rates by the first send’s audience shares. That gives 96.7%, a 1.6-point decline compared with 98.3%. Use that calculation to see the role of provider mix. To understand why Gmail fell, you still need to check whether the Gmail recipients themselves changed, for example because one send included older subscribers.
Try a different Gmail share
Keep delivery rates at 96% for Gmail and 99.5% for the other provider. Change who receives the send to see how the overall rate moves.
Two ways to lose 100 Gmail deliveries
Suppose two newsletters each go to 5,000 Gmail addresses. Deliveries fall from 4,950 to 4,850. The provider report locates the drop. To narrow down the cause, compare established subscribers with recently imported ones if your audience records or a support export let you make that split. Here, assume 4,500 established readers and 500 imported readers in both sends.
If the established group lost 10 deliveries and the imported group lost 90, start with the import. Check the original acquisition source, whether those readers recently confirmed their addresses, and whether technical rejection reasons cluster around that batch. Reverse the losses and both groups fall two percentage points. That pattern makes a change shared across the sends, such as a sending domain or configuration change, worth checking first.
Keep the group definition stable. If you can match recipients, compare addresses that received both sends and report additions and removals separately. If you only have provider-level totals, leave the source of the loss open. The two cases below would look identical in that report.
| Hypothetical result | Established (4,500) | Imported (500) |
|---|---|---|
| Loss concentrated in the import | 10 fewer | 90 fewer |
| Both groups fell two points | 90 fewer | 10 fewer |
What to check before changing your sending setup
Once you have a narrower group to investigate, check the bounce categories available to your team before changing the sending domain or removing a segment. A permanent address rejection and a temporary delivery problem call for different follow-up.
Look separately at sends to established subscribers and to newly acquired readers. A drop concentrated in the new group gives you a smaller problem to investigate. A drop across both groups makes shared factors, such as a domain change or sending configuration, worth checking. For that review, use the Gmail bulk-sender guide. If complaints enter the discussion, check the denominator first, as in the Yahoo complaint-rate guide.
Delivery reports and inbox placement answer different questions
A provider can accept a message and still route it to spam. If delivery is steady but engagement falls, check whether the drop appears in clicks as well as opens. The report can show where to investigate, and our guide explains why Apple Mail opens are hard to interpret. Google’s Postmaster Tools documentation explains the domain-level Gmail reputation, spam and delivery information available there. Its dashboards may have limited data at low sending volumes, so a missing reading is inconclusive.
What to send to support if the decline repeats
Give support one affected send and a comparable send from before the change. Include the sending domain, provider, dates, recipient counts, accepted-message counts and available rejection codes. Group the codes by reason and include how often each occurred. Keep subscriber addresses out of the first message. That gives support a specific change to investigate and a comparison they can reproduce.
After the next normal send, record what recovered. Gmail may accept a larger share of a comparable audience while clicks stay flat. Those observations answer different questions. Keep a dated note of changes to the audience, domain and schedule so the next person can reconstruct the comparison.
Compare bounce rates using attempted sends for each provider. Newsletter bounce rate calculator