26 Ways to Improve Your Marketing Email Health Score

What’s your email health score? Have you looked at it?

Your email health score gives you a snapshot of how well your marketing emails are performing and helps you understand what’s working, and what needs improvement.

If you’ve ever looked at the Email Health page in HubSpot and wondered what to do with the data, you’re not alone. Understanding how each metric contributes to your overall score is key to maintaining strong deliverability and engagement.

By focusing on core metrics like open rates, click-through rates, hard bounces, and unsubscribes, you can make data-driven decisions that improve campaign performance over time.

In this guide, we’ll break down each metric and share actionable ways to improve your email health score.

Updated Jan. 26, 2026

Email open rate: What it is and how to improve opens

Your open rate measures how frequently your audience is opening your emails. It represents the number of people who opened your marketing emails divided by the number of people who were sent the email.

Ways to Improve Open Rates: 

1. Write Strong Subject Lines
   • Ensure they are compelling and relevant to your audience.
   • Use HubSpot’s AI Assistant to craft subject lines that have performed well in the past.
     
2. Optimize Length and Content
   
   • Are the subject lines too long or too short?
   • Do they lead with the most important information?
   • Include personalization and emojis where it makes sense.
     
3. Target the Right Audience
   
   • Ensure your content matches the interests and needs of your audience.
   • Regularly clean your email lists to maintain high relevance.
     
     

Email click-through rate (CTR): What it is and how to increase clicks

HubSpot defines click-through rate (CTR) as the percentage of people who clicked a link in an email out of the people who opened it. Click rate represents the number of people who clicked a link out of the total number of emails delivered.

Both metrics help you understand how engaging your email content and calls to action are.

Ways to Improve Click-through Rates: 

1. Include Multiple Links
   • Ensure there are links throughout the email, not just at the bottom. 
   • Use a mix of link types such as button links, in-line text links, and clickable images.
2. Place Links Strategically
   • Ensure important links are placed high in the email where readers are more likely to see them.
     
3. Avoid Overloading with CTAs 
   • Provide clear and concise calls to action without overwhelming the reader.
     
     

Hard bounces: What they are and how to reduce them

A hard bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered due to a permanent reason such as an invalid email address. Hard bounces negatively impact your sender reputation and email deliverability if they’re not addressed.

Ways to Reduce Hard Bounces: 

1. Maintain Clean Email Lists
   • Regularly update and clean your email lists to remove invalid addresses.
2. Check for Spam Triggers
   • Ensure your email content does not trigger spam filters by avoiding "spammy" words and phrases.
     
3. Monitor Bounce Rates 
   • Use HubSpot’s tools to track and automatically manage hard bounces to protect your sender reputation.

Email unsubscribes: What they mean and how to reduce them

Your unsubscribe rate measures how many people opted out of all emails compared to the number of people who received your marketing emails. Rising unsubscribe rates are often a sign that content, frequency, or targeting needs adjustment.

Ways to Reduce Unsubscribes: 

1. Match Subject Line and Content
   • Ensure the content delivered matches what was promised in the subject line.
2. Frequency and Relevance
   • Avoid sending emails too frequently and ensure content remains relevant to your audience.
3. Build Trust
   • Provide valuable and educational content to build trust before making a more direct sales pitch.
4. Update Email Templates
   • Refresh outdated templates to keep your emails visually appealing.
     
   
   

Additional Ways to Improve Your Email Health Score

Even small improvements here can add up quickly across a campaign.

1. Use Visuals and Examples
   • Include images, infographics, or charts to illustrate key points and data. 
   • Provide real-world examples or case studies to make the content more relatable. 
2. Optimize for Mobile 
   • Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly with responsive designs. 
   • Use shorter paragraphs and larger fonts for better readability on small screens.
     
3. Engage with Interactive Elements
   • Add questions or polls within the content to encourage reader interaction. 
   • Use clear CTAs to guide readers on what action to take next.
     
4. Regular Analysis and Adjustment 
   • Continuously monitor your email performance metrics.
   • Make data-driven adjustments to your strategy to keep improving results.

Focusing on these key areas will help maintain an effective email marketing strategy. Craft compelling subject lines, provide valuable content, and ensure your emails are relevant and well-targeted. Regularly analyze email performance and make necessary adjustments to build stronger relationships with your audience, increase engagement, and drive better outcomes.

Putting It Into Practice

Improving your email health score is mostly about consistency. Focus on the fundamentals first: write subject lines that earn opens, make your emails easy to click, keep your lists clean to reduce hard bounces, and send content that stays relevant so subscribers stick around. Track performance over time, test small changes each send, and you’ll build a healthier program that delivers better results.

Ready to elevate your email marketing game? Partner with accelant today and transform your HubSpot strategy into a powerhouse of engagement and results! 

Related reads

• How to Recover Your Email Deliverability and Sender Score — covering reputation & inbox placement 
• How to Ensure Your Marketing Emails Reach the Inbox — covering practical deliverability tactics

FAQ

Q: How do I check my email health score?
In HubSpot, go to your marketing email tools and open the Email Health view to see your overall score and the metrics driving it, like opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes.

Q: What is a good email health score?
A “good” score typically means your deliverability and engagement are stable, with low bounces and unsubscribes and consistent opens and clicks. The most important thing is improving over time and staying out of risk ranges.

Q: Why is my email health score dropping?
It usually drops when deliverability or engagement worsens, like rising hard bounces, higher unsubscribes, lower opens, or spam complaints, often tied to list quality or sending to unengaged contacts.

Q: How can I improve my email health score quickly?
Start by pausing sends to unengaged contacts, cleaning invalid or risky emails, tightening segmentation, and improving subject lines and CTAs so your most engaged audience drives better signals.