How to visualize deliverability vs engagement over time?

You're watching two things at once: where your emails are landing (inbox vs spam) and what subscribers are actually doing once they get there (opening, clicking). Plot them together and the relationship becomes obvious. Track them in silos and you'll keep guessing why opens dropped.

The chart that works best is a dual-axis line chart. Put weeks on the X-axis, inbox placement rate on the left Y-axis (as a percentage), and open rate or click rate on the right Y-axis. Google Sheets handles this fine. Looker Studio is better if you want to automate the data feed.

Here's what to pull and where to find it:

• Inbox placement by mailbox provider: Google Postmaster Tools (free) shows your spam rate for Gmail traffic. Microsoft SNDS shows your IP reputation for Outlook and Hotmail. You need at least a few hundred daily sends to Gmail to get reliable data in Postmaster Tools.
• Delivery rate from your ESP: This is "accepted by the server" not "placed in inbox" but it's still worth tracking as a floor metric.
• Open rate and click rate: From your ESP's campaign report. Export weekly. If Apple Mail Privacy Protection has inflated your opens, lean on click rate as your cleaner signal.

Dump all of this into a spreadsheet. One column per date, one row per metric. Then build the chart. Most senders run this weekly. Daily is noise unless you're sending at high volume.

What you're looking for is the feedback loop: inbox placement falls first, then opens follow it down a few sends later. Bad placement means fewer people see your emails, which drops engagement, which signals to mailbox providers that your content isn't wanted, which makes placement worse. Once you can see this on a chart it's much easier to intervene early.

Watch for divergences too. High delivery but dropping opens usually means your emails are landing in Promotions or the spam folder rather than the primary inbox. High opens but rising spam complaint rate points to a segment or content problem.

If you want help building this for your specific ESP or setting up automated reporting, our SOS hotline is free and we'll walk through it with you.