Everything You Need to Know About Email Deliverability

Welcome back to The Practical Prospecting newsletter!

Agenda

1. Clarifying Google’s Email Update
2. What Impacts Email Deliverability?
3. The Updated Email Deliverability Checklist for 2024

Today’s newsletter is powered by Pipl! A cold email automation software with a heavy focus on deliverability. My favorite feature is their “Sequence Score”. I haven’t seen anything like it in other email tools.

Sequence Score is based on 3 things:

1. Email Deliverability
2. Sequence Setup
3. Email Copy

It tracks a number of variables in each category to calculate your score and tells you exactly what to do to improve it.

Check out this Screenshot where I explain how it works:

Try Pip.ai for free here:

Try it for Free

Clarifying Google’s Email Update

This update was all over LinkedIn the other week. I’m sure you heard about it (way too many times):

You can read the actual update from Google here.

TL;DR - this is the key update: "If an organization has an abuse complaint rate of 0.3% or higher, Google & Yahoo will automatically block all messages coming from that organization"

In other words, if 3 people out of 1,000 mark your email as spam, Google will block your domain from sending emails. And you will have to go through an appeal process to reactivate it. But only if you’re organization is sending 5,000+ emails per day across the entire domain.

However, this only applies if you send to “@gmail.com” email addresses. Not business email addresses on Google Workspace.

And I’d assume 99% of you reading this are not emailing personal Gmail accounts.

So this update is somewhat irrelevant.

Or is it???

Google (and other email service providers) are clearly showing us that protecting their customer’s inboxes from spam is their priority.

Even if this update was somewhat of a false alarm, the fact remains that is harder than ever to avoid spam filters (and it will only get harder).

Ultimately, I see this as a good thing.

This means that the “spray n’ pray” cold emailers will start to fizzle out. Leaving more room in the inbox for professional senders like you and me.

So if you want to send cold emails the right way, and avoid getting your email shut down, here’s everything you need to know…

What Impacts Email Deliverability?

This graphic from Pip.ai does a great job of visualizing where the problem with deliverability occurs.

Once your email is sent, the ESP (email service provider) filters it based on your sender reputation to decide if they should let you into the recipient’s inbox.

Here are the two biggest things that affect your sender reputation:

1. Engagement RateAre people opening, clicking, and replying to your emails? If not, ESPs will think you’re sending unwanted emails. This is where warmup tools can help (more on this later).
2. Complaint RateYour complaint rate is factored by the number of times someone has marked your email as spam. If you’re a Google user, you can track your complaint rate using the free Google Postmaster tool.

The Updated Email Deliverability Checklist for 2024

#1 Purchase a new domain for cold emailing

• If you’re still sending cold emails on your primary domain, you run the risk of damaging it for the rest of the organization. Setting up a new domain diversifies your risk because it means you’re sending fewer emails per domain. I recommend going to Squarespace or Namecheap and purchasing “try[yourdomain]”.

#2 Set up your DMARC, SPF & DKIM records on all of your domains

• These are authentications that show receiving email addresses you are not a spammer. Without them, you’re at a higher risk of going to spam. Luckily, they’re stupidly simple to set up. Here’s the video guide I use to do it.

#3 Forward your new domain to your main domain

• After creating a new domain, you’ll want to point it to your primary website in case a prospect searches for it.

#4 Create new email addresses on that domain

• I recommend sending no more than 50 emails per day, per email address. So take the total number of emails you plan to send per day, and divide that number by 50 to determine how many emails you need per sender. Also, be sure to add a profile picture to your email account - this helps with open and reply rates.?

#5 Warmup your new emails

• Warmup tools send emails to and from your email to other addresses in the warmup tool. This engagement shows ESPs (email service providers) that you are a sender who gets engagement on their email (making you appear less likely to be a spammer). This is especially important for brand-new emails since they have no reputation. I recommend starting with 40 warmup emails per day at a 40% reply rate. Do this for two to three weeks before sending a single cold email. Once you start sending emails, you’ll want to reduce the warmup to 10 emails per day and keep it on indefinitely.

#6 Use a custom tracking domain

• Tracking opens/clicks requires a snippet of HTML in your email body. This is necessary to track metrics, but it hurts deliverability. Custom domain tracking white labels this to make it look like you’re sending manual emails from your inbox (and not an automated software). Most sequencing tools have this feature so just look for a help article or reach out to their support team.

#7 Optimize your email signature?

• Your email signature should be as simple as possible with no links aside from an unsubscribe link. Mine is “Jed Mahrle, Founder at Practical Prospecting”

#8 Have a clear unsubscribe link

• This is incredibly important because you want to make it as easy as possible for prospects to unsubscribe instead of marking you as spam.

#9 Slowly ramp up your email volume

• If you’re setting up a new email address, you’ll want to slowly increase the volume. Start with 20 per day then increase that number by 5 emails per day each week until you reach 50 emails per day.?

#10 Decrease your sending frequency

• Most email sequencers let you spread out your email sending across the day. No human sends out 50 emails at once. So make sure your automated emails are spaced out as much as possible to look natural. I recommend a minimum of 10 minutes between each send.

#11 Verify your emails before sending

• Every time you send an email that bounces it negatively impacts your email reputation. Be sure to run your emails through a list verification tool to filter out any bad data before you start a campaign.

#12 Run your messaging through a spam word checker

• ESPs filter your emails to spam based on the words you use. I use this free spam word checker to check my messaging for any words that might put me in spam.

#13 Use Spintax

• Spintax involves rotating alternative phrases within an email to create subtle variations (e.g. starting three different emails with 'Hey', 'Hi', or 'Hello'). If you aren’t familiar with Spintax watch this video. It’s a must-have for anyone running automated email campaigns.

#14 Frequently update your email copy

• I recommend doing this once per month. If you’re sending the same general email templates over and over, ESPs will catch on and eventually flag you. However, Spintax helps with this.

#15 Send fewer emails per prospect

• 20+ step sequences do more harm than good. The big sequence software companies will tell you it’s the right approach, but here are 4 reasons why I think it’s BS:Sell how you want to be sold to. Have you ever received 8 emails in a row from one person? It’s annoying. No matter how good the emails are.20+ step sequences never get completed. By the time you get halfway through, you’ve given up and moved on to another sequence.If you have a low reply rate for emails 1 - 4, what makes you think emails 5 - 8 will be any better? Sure you might get a few more replies later in the sequence, but at what cost? You’re burning your TAM with irrelevant emails.Most importantly, it’s a HUGE spam risk. As discussed earlier, one of the biggest factors for deliverability is your spam complaint rate. And I don’t know about you, but the only people I mark as spam are the ones who won’t stop emailing me.?For all of these reasons, I recommend sequences with 4 emails max (as discussed in last week’s newsletter). Be brief, be brilliant, be gone.

Please note: there are a lot of things you can do to improve your deliverability. Not everything on this list HAS to be done. It was meant to be an exhaustive list to give you everything you could possibly need.

At the end of the day, what’s most important is sending emails that your prospects would actually want to respond to.

When I’m writing emails, I try to put myself in the prospect’s shoes and ask “Where would I stop reading? Where would I get confused? How is this email different?”.

You can be doing everything else right, but if your messaging is bad, it ain’t gonna matter.

…

We are true professionals at email deliverability and are open to helping out.

You can find us online and book a call with us https://calendly.com/nazmulfreelancer/schedule-meet-nazmul or Nazmul Hossain directly at [email protected] and be sure to mention this newsletter.

Thanks for reading,

Nazmul