The email journey: Key delivery events at beehiiv

At beehiiv, we know that getting your emails into the right inbox is essential to building your readership and engaging with your audience. From the moment you hit ‘Send,’ your email embarks on a journey through multiple checkpoints, each playing a role in its success.

Below, we’ll walk you through the 10 key delivery events that shape your email's path, from initial processing to engagement insights like opens and clicks. By understanding these events, you can better tailor your content and make data-driven decisions to strengthen your newsletter’s reach and impact.

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Key delivery events at beehiiv 

Sent: This is the starting point of your email’s journey. Once you hit the ‘Send’ button, our system records the total number of subscribers you’re targeting. Before sending, we check each address against our database for any previous permanent issues.

Dropped: Before leaving our platform, your email passes multiple checks to ensure it’s appropriate to send to each address. Addresses that have previously hard bounced, been flagged as invalid by mailbox providers, or appear on our suppression lists (e.g., unsubscribed or previously marked as spam) are ‘dropped’ and won’t be sent to.

Processed: After filtering out addresses with permanent issues, your email is prepared for sending. We record this processing event before sending it to the intended mailbox providers.

Deferred: A 'deferred' event means your email was not rejected but is temporarily delayed by the recipient’s mailbox provider. This often occurs when the provider is experiencing temporary server issues, or the provider is throttling traffic due to high sending volumes or mild reputation concerns. In these cases, beehiiv will automatically retry delivery for up to 72 hours. If the email is not successfully delivered within that window, it is then considered a block.

Blocked (Soft Bounce): A 'soft bounce' occurs when an email is rejected by the mailbox provider due to a temporary or potentially recoverable issue. This can happen when the recipient’s mailbox is full or over quota, a previously deferred message is not accepted within 72 hours, or if the recipient’s mailbox is temporarily unavailable.

Blocked (Hard Bounce): A 'hard bounce' happens when an email is permanently rejected by the mailbox provider. Permanent issues leading to hard bounces include invalid or non-existent email addresses, domains that no longer accept mail, spam filtering due to content or poor sender reputation, or authentication failures such as incorrect SPF, DKIM, or DMARC setup.

Delivered: Your email is ‘delivered’ when it’s successfully accepted at the mailbox provider's gateway, meaning it wasn’t deferred or blocked. However, this doesn’t mean that your mail was placed in the inbox; your email may still end up in the spam / bulk folder or another tab.

Opened: An ‘open’ event is recorded when the recipient's email client loads an invisible tracking pixel embedded in the email, signaling that it was viewed. Privacy tools, like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), and some automated security apps can load this pixel automatically, which may inflate open rates with non-human interactions.

Clicked: A ‘click’ event is recorded when someone clicks a link within your email, showing interest in that content. As with opens, some security applications may produce automated or non-human clicks that inflate click rates.

For more, refer to this article: Understanding click metrics: navigating variations and automated interactions.

Unsubscribed: An ‘unsubscribe’ event occurs when a recipient opts out of your mailings through an unsubscribe link within the email, indicating they no longer wish to receive emails from you.

Reported Spam: If a recipient marks your email as spam, some mailbox providers will forward the complaint to beehiiv through a preestablished feedback loop (FBL). This allows beehiiv to suppress the address from future mailings. However, it should be noted, many providers such as Gmail don’t offer FBLs, meaning if your list includes a lot of Gmail addresses, your visible complaint rate may reflect only a portion of actual complaints.