The Ultimate, No Bullshit

Cold Email Deliverability

Checklist
 READ THIS

This checklist is focused on cold emailing.

That means that some of the tips are less relevant for
newsletters or transactional emails sending use case.

This is is the result of 5 years of high level cold email practice

for 130 companies in 40 different industries.

We've used the following guidelines to grow from 0€ to 120k€

Monthly Recurring Revenue in 6 months with email as our
only acquisition channel with 75% open rate on average.

We regularly update this checklist with the precious data

collected by MailReach over the years.

To really feel the positive impact on your deliverability, you

need to follow ALL recommendations, otherwise you'll
have semi-results.

Following ALL those recommendations literally allow you to

have a 100% PERFECT deliverability. We give all the tips,
nothing is hidden.

2/9
 THE OPTIMAL SETUP
(backed by data)

Avoid domains with hyphens, numbers & exotic extensions

1 Domains that contain "-" or numbers start with a handicap (even if small) in
terms of deliverability. For the extension / TLD, choose a ".com", ".co", ".io" or
the official one from your country.

Setup your SPF, DKIM and DMARC

2 Set these up, that's really important. SPF and DKIM are mandatory. Do the
DMARC as well.

Send from Google Workspace or Office365 mailboxes

3 From our data, sending from Google Workspace give the best results in terms
of reaching the inbox. Office 365 accounts own the 2nd position. These are
the most human ways of sending emails. Having a human behavior is crucial.

Use a sending tool that sends from Google or Microsoft API

4 Use a tool that sends from Google API or Office365 / Microsoft API, that's the
most human way of sending emails : with Google IPs or Microsoft IPs.
Recommendations : Emelia, MixMax or Apollo.io

3/9
 THE OPTIMAL SETUP
(backed by data)

Set up a custom tracking domain

5 BIG IMPACT. Set up a custom tracking domain to avoid being associated to
the spammers who use the same sending tool. This one is a game changer.
Never neglect this, not doing that can divide your opening rates by 2 or 3.

Send from a human address (not a generic one)

6 Don't send from a generic email address or from a brand, send from a person
with a first and last name like [email protected]. Avoid info@, hello@,
contact@, these prefixes increase the chances to land in Gmail categories.
Bonus : women have higher open and reply rates on average => Hire women :)

Use a (really good) email warmer to generate engagement

7 HUGE IMPACT. Use an efficient warming tool (like MailReach, wink) to generate
engagement on your emails and teach the ESP to send your emails to the inbox,
not in spam. That's game changing to raise and protect your reputation.

4/9
 YOUR SENDING

Send MAX 150 cold emails daily per email address

8 BIG IMPACT. The fewer per day per inbox / per domain the better for your
deliverability. It's backed by data. Why? Because that's a human behavior.
More information here : The Best Cold Email Deliverability Sending Strategy

If you need to send more, use different domains

9 If you need to send a bigger volume, send from several domains. One address per
domain. Sending from different domains is important to prevent spam spreading
between addresses. Again, more information here.

Have a linear sending activity without big spikes

10 Really important. Send your emails throughout the weekdays with a relatively similar
quantity each day. Avoid sending everything in a day or two.

Send throughout the day, no one shot blasts

11 Like the previous one but during the day. Avoid sending all your emails in a short
period of a time or worst, in one blast. Send throughout the day with a delay between
your emails.

Don't send send too many follow ups and space them
12 The more follow ups, the more spam complaints. In the long run, it's better for your
deliverability to send less follow ups. 2 follow ups is fine (3 emails in total). Also, let
people breath between your follow-ups. 3 days is the minimum.

5/9
 YOUR LIST

Don't buy email lists, they suck 99.9% of the time

13 You can't know the quality. When you buy a list, most of the time it has been bought
by others so the people inside are being constantly spammed.

If you target B2B, get your emails from LinkedIn

14 LinkedIn is the best source of contacts as it's up to date, complete and easy to
extract. Apollo.io & Evaboot are for us the best tools to find emails out of LK.

Make sure your list is targeted & remove irrelevant people

15 Target people who are really likely to be interested. Remove all the non relevant
people to minimize being marked as spam, that's important.

Spend time to correct the errors that can cost you

16 Do the cleaning such as the first and last names inversions to avoid the "Hi Doe"
instead of "Hi John". This kind of mistakes make bad impression and can harm your
reputation because of spam complaints.

Remove generic and non human email addresses

17 Sending to generic addresses makes you land in spam as most the time, it forwards
your email to dozens of people who can mark you as spam.

Always verify your list and remove undeliverable addresses

18 You absolutely have to verify your list to remove the addresses that are not valid
anymore. For the 'catch all' addresses, dilute them in your campaigns.

6/9
 YOUR CONTENT

Put an easy-to-spot unsubscribe link (MANDATORY)

19 That's simple and proven, no unsubscribe link = more spam complaints. No debate on
this. No exception. It has to be a LINK that works. Today, not having an easy-to-find
unsubscribe link is like burning your sending reputation with a flamethrower. And NO,
saying "reply stop so I won't bother you again" doesn't count as an unsubscribe link.

Minimize the number of links / URLs : the fewer, the better

20 BIG IMPACT. Sometimes you can land in spam just because of one link or URL. Don't
use URL shorteners, don't mask the links. Make sure the links are HTTPS. Run a
deliverability test with MailReach to know if links hurt your deliverability.

Avoid using images : the fewer, the better

21 At least in your first email. Images can make you land in spam or promotion. And even
if you like having your fancy logos in your signature, avoid them.

Personnalize your emails, at least the (First Name)

22 This way, you won't send the exact same email to thousands of people. It's also
better to generate interest,. Using the (Company Name) boosts results.

Don't be too pushy, minimize the risk of pissing people off

23 Write emails in a way that won't irritate people. The more you piss off people, the more
spam complaints you get, the more your reputation is damaged.

7/9
 YOUR CONTENT

Make sure you don't have any spam word - beware!

24 Obviously, talking about money, sex, diets, losing weight, loans, big promotions, etc
make you land in spam. But sometimes, even words you wouldn't suspect can put you
in spam. Today, any word can be a spam word with machine learning algorithms.

Avoid CAPITALS and aggressive punctuation like this!!!

25 It makes you land in spam, that's all. Nothing more to say.

Don't send attachments

26 It's considered suspect since it's used for phishing and hacking. Use a tool like DocSend
instead. That's a deliverability killer.

Run deliverability tests to make sure your content is fine

27 MailReach offers a free spam test which is reliable compared to other solutions.
You can do 3 free tests per 24 hours. Use it and get your spam score.

8/9
 TO GO FURTHER
Keep in mind : imperfect deliverability = losing money

MailReach is the #1 cold email deliverability solution to help you

maximize your deliverability by generating engagement on your emails.
Learn more on mailreach.co

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