How to Fix Your Cold Email Deliverability

Ensuring that your cold emails reach inboxes is crucial for maintaining high reply rates. If your emails are landing in spam folders, this guide will help you identify and fix deliverability issues.

Understanding the Fundamentals

Following best practices in email deliverability can prevent your messages from being flagged as spam. Key factors include:

• Product-Market Fit: Emails with high engagement rates signal legitimacy to email providers. If product-market fit isn’t ideal, deliverability best practices become even more essential.

• Secondary Domains: Never use your primary domain for cold outreach. Instead, set up multiple secondary domains to distribute email volume and reduce the risk of blacklisting.

• Proper Setup: Verify DKIM and DMARC records to authenticate your domain. Limit each domain to two inboxes to maintain reply rates and prevent disconnections.

The Warm-Up Process

Before launching large-scale campaigns, warming up inboxes ensures better performance and longevity.

• Duration: Warm up inboxes for at least two weeks, extending the period when possible.

• Volume: Start with 5-20 emails per day and gradually increase volume to build trust with email providers.

Crafting Your Emails

The content of your emails directly impacts deliverability. Follow these best practices:

• Plain Text Only: Avoid links, images, and signatures in initial outreach to prevent triggering spam filters.

• Turn Off Open Tracking: Instead of tracking opens, measure success based on reply rates.

• Keep It Short: Concise, conversational emails perform better and are less likely to be marked as spam.

• Short Sequences: Limit follow-ups to two steps to avoid irritating recipients and increasing spam complaints.

Managing Your Campaigns

Ongoing campaign management is key to maintaining high deliverability.

• Monitor Bounce Rates: Keep bounce rates below 2%. If exceeded, stop the campaign, verify leads, and remove invalid addresses.

• Update Your DNC List: Regularly update your "Do Not Contact" list to prevent outreach to unsubscribed or negative respondents.

• Scale Horizontally: Distribute email volume across multiple inboxes instead of relying on a single inbox to maintain deliverability.

When to Start Fresh

If reply rates consistently drop despite following best practices, consider setting up a new domain and inboxes. Since domains and inboxes are inexpensive, starting fresh can be the quickest way to resolve persistent deliverability issues.

Conclusion

Fixing cold email deliverability requires consistency and adherence to best practices. By monitoring campaigns, refining strategies, and knowing when to start fresh, you can significantly improve your email success rates.

Need help optimizing your cold email setup? Book a call with Origami Agents today.