Cold Email Academy

The Basics

Deliverability is one of the most complicated components of any cold email campaign. Consequently, it’s all too often overlooked.

Don’t make that mistake. You can easily get a leg up on your competition by learning two things: how deliverability works, and how you can apply this knowledge to maximize your hit rate. So here’s lesson one: what happens when you send an email.

The recipient’s server will check the sender’s records, the reputation of their domain and delivery server, and finally, the content of the email.

It sounds simple, but don’t be tricked into thinking deliverability is just a box-ticking exercise – email servers are more sophisticated than that. Who you’re emailing, the strictness of servers, and the “red flags” they’re looking for all make a big difference – and they’re going to vary a lot between industries and institutions.

Get more insights into the basics of email deliverability – and how to get more of your emails into the inbox – by watching our video above.

DNS Records

Think hitting “send” is all there is to successfully delivering emails? Think again.

There’s a whole lot happening behind the scenes that helps determine whether or not your email makes it into your recipient’s inbox.

Your DNS record is just the start. This consists of the:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
• DMARC (not necessary but very beneficial when emailing contacts with extra-strict servers)

Why does all of this matter? If an element of your DNS record is incorrect or missing, you could be blocked at the server level. In other words, you won’t even make it into a spam filter. This means checking the health of your DNS records is critical to the success of your cold email campaigns.

Get a breakdown of how to do this in the video above.

Toolkit

If you want your emails to make it into the inbox, you need the right tools. Use Mailshake? It now has a real-time analyzer that will highlight potential problems with your emails that could affect deliverability or response rates.

MX Toolbox will check the health of your DNS records and similar data.

Want to get out of Gmail’s Promotions tab? That’s tough, but GlockApps can help get you into Primary instead.

You can even send your outreach email to Mail Tester, and the site will score your email and provide a checklist of deliverability-based changes you can make to boost success rates.

If that’s not enough, you can also increase deliverability by moving to a different email service provider (hint: G Suite), changing your sending domain, or switching to a better DNS manager.

Learn all of these deliverability-boosting tips and tricks and more in the video above.

Domain Warming

When you start a cold email campaign, there’s always a risk that one of your receivers is going to mark your email as spam. It’s bound to happen at some point, and when it does, it can affect the deliverability of all your future emails from that domain.

So, what can you do to prevent that? While you can’t eliminate the risk entirely, you can minimize its impact on your future business communications by using alternate domains. That way, even if you do get marked as spam, emails from your primary domain won’t be negatively impacted.

But using alternate domains isn’t as simple as setting one up and sending out some cold emails – you’ll still need to warm it up first.

Learn how to use alternate domains to mitigate risks in the video above.

Engagement

When it comes to email, the saying “no news is good news” doesn’t hold up. While you might think that getting a “no” is worse than simply not getting a reply, flat-out rejections can actually be helpful.

A more applicable saying is “any engagement is good engagement”. Even if you’re only getting a bunch of “no thanks” replies, you’re still racking up engagement, which will improve your deliverability and, as a result, your chances of getting a “yes please!”.

The key to getting the engagement rolling is to ask questions. Instead of leaving off by saying you’d like to hop on a call, rotate some other questions like “would this interest you?”.

Learn how bad news can be good news in the video above.