Yahoo Email Deliverability Performance Feeds

Yahoo's server-side data feeds for senders: the Placement Feed (inbox/spam/folder/error/complaints) and Campaign Performance Feed (engagement metrics), with schemas and SLAs.

Operational3 min read

Who it is for Senders, ESP operators

Applies to senders on any platform

If you want to know whether your mail reaches the inbox or the spam folder at Yahoo, without relying on seed lists, Yahoo's performance feeds give you that answer. They are the only direct way to see ground-truth placement data at this major mailbox provider.

The feeds report email placement and engagement taken directly from the Yahoo mail servers, rather than from tracking pixels or from seed or panel data. Yahoo presents this as more respectful of privacy than pixel tracking, and more representative than panel sources with small samples, given that Yahoo has hundreds of millions of active users.

The two feeds

Placement Feed

The Placement Feed tracks where messages land (inbox, spam, folders), as well as errors and complaints. The data is filtered by an allowlist of sender domains or sender IP addresses that the feed's user supplies.

Dimensions	Metrics
`dkim_domain`, `sender_domain`, `ip_address`, `xheader`, `xheader_value`	`inbox_delivers`, `spam_delivers`, `folder_delivers`, `error_delivers`, `complaints`

The xheader and xheader_value dimensions let a sender break results down by a custom X-header (for example, a campaign ID added to outgoing mail).

Campaign Performance Feed

The Campaign Performance Feed measures engagement after delivery, broken down by sender domain and campaign. It is filtered by a sender allowlist of sender domains.

Dimensions	Metrics
`declared_template_namespace`, `declared_template_id`, `declared_template_goal`, `delivery_type`, `client`, `sender_domain`, `sender_email`, `engagement_date`, `user_local_hour`, `is_scrubbed`	`delivered`, `opened`, `link_clicked`, `deleted`, `marked_read`, `forwarded`, `starred`, `archived`, `moved`, `push_notif_opened`, `replied`, `marked_spam`, `dwell_time_read`, `dwell_time_glance`, `dwell_time_skim`

The engagement signals go deep. They include deletions, replies, spam votes, opens of push notifications, and categories of dwell time (read, glance and skim). These are the same kinds of signals that mailbox providers use internally for reputation (see Foundations of Email Deliverability).

Feed specifications

Spec	Placement Feed	Campaign Performance Feed
Reporting granularity	Hourly	Hourly
Delivery granularity	Hourly	Daily
SLA (data latency)	12 hours	48 hours
Retention	30 days	30 days
File format	Avro	Avro
Timezone	UTC	UTC
Filtering	Allowlist of sender domains or sender IPs	Allowlist of sender domains

Access

Yahoo publishes no pricing, no formal eligibility criteria and no way to enroll yourself. Contact mail-questions@yahooinc.com to learn about the program and its access requirements.

How it fits a deliverability workflow

Placement monitoring: replace or check seed-list testing at Yahoo with actual counts of inbox and spam placement for each domain and IP address. Watch error_delivers alongside your SMTP logs (see Yahoo SMTP Error Codes).
Complaint-rate tracking: complaints divided by inbox_delivers approximates the rate that Yahoo checks against its 0.3% threshold (Yahoo Sender Requirements). Combine it with the suppression of individual recipients through the Complaint Feedback Loop.
Engagement optimization: dwell time and action metrics (deletions compared with reads, user_local_hour) help decide on content, segmentation and send times for each campaign or template.
Stream comparison: the dkim_domain and ip_address dimensions show how separate mail streams perform compared with each other (see Advanced IP Segmentation).

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