Guide on maintaining a healthy domain.
How does one feel if they spent their hard time searching for accounts, building a qualified leads list, writing a killer sequence, and finally ending up in prospect's SPAM?
21% of the emails never make it to the inbox.
-Sendgrid
No matter how good your subject lines, winning content, open rates, and CTAs are it doesn't make sense if your emails are not delivered.
There are high chances of your emails going straight into prospects' spam if you don't focus on your email deliverability.
What actually is email deliverability?
When a user sends an email and that email successfully gets delivered to the prospect's inbox, not spam.
Here's are some of the proven tips you should follow to improve your email deliverability.
1. Always keep an eye on what you send
Are you the one who likes to send long subject lines with Meeting??????, %%%OPEN RATES%%%, WATCH OUT !!!!?
It is high time you should stop sending all those symbolic, highly creative subject lines.
There are high chances that your email will never get opened.
2. Sending out in bulk should be avoided
If you are sending all emails in one go, Congrats, You got a new name, SPAMMER. Instead, you should adapt yourself to maintaining proper schedules with a time interval between emails.
Outplay allows users to have control over no. of emails to be delivered in a minute. This allows users not to oversend emails in bulk at a time.
3. Make it easier for your prospects to opt-out
You should allow your users to opt out anytime with an unsubscribe link. This is actually a mandatory regulation based on the CAN-SPAM Act.
It should be included in all your cold emails. Also, this helps your prospects not to hit spam by directly looking at your cold email. If unsubscribing is difficult, in frustration, recipients may mark your email as spam as a way to stop receiving your email.
What is CAN-SPAM?
CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act, which is a law that governs all commercial email messages.
CAN-SPAM says that when sending commercial emails(marketing, sales, newsletters) you must:
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not use false or misleading subject information
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Tell recipients where you are located - physical email address.
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Allow recipients to opt-out from receiving future emails
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Monitor what others are sending on your behalf.
So, the next time you send out a cold email, do not forget to include an opt-out link for your own good.
4. Be careful with SPAM traps
If you are doing lead gen organically, then you shouldn't be worried about these SPAM traps. But, if you're buying leads from non-trusted sources or giveaways you should look for these SPAM traps.
SPAM traps are the email addresses that Internet Service Providers(ISPs) use to identify senders who aren’t properly maintaining their lead list.
Maintaining an organic lead list and removing inactive, bounced leads will help you to avoid hurting your domain reputation.
5. Have you checked if your IP is Blacklisted?
If you think your emails are not reaching the prospect's inbox, check whether your sender IP is blacklisted. You can use some available online tools to check whether your mail server has been blacklisted or not.
Example: https://www.whatismyip.com/blacklist-check/
6. Avoid resending emails to bounced addresses
Do not send emails to already bounced prospects until they are updated with a new or correct email address.
If you send emails to such addresses, You're making your own pitfall to hurt your domain reputation and sender reputation.
8. Adding a custom domain
Outplay uses the default domain for tracking links, opt-out, and meeting links. When your tracking domain is different from your sender domain it's more likely to end up in spam. To avoid that you need to add a custom domain in Outplay.
9. Authenticate your domain if not done yet
Domain Authentication verifies the email from its source by validating the sender's email.
It verifies emails by checking for any spamming or spoofing that is done from the sender's email.
This section may sound super technical, but, this is a no-brainer.
Domain authentication involves:
SPF: Sender Policy Framework allows you to specify the IP address of the mail server which can send emails on your behalf. This can be achieved by adding the TXT record in the sender's domain DNS settings.
DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail allows the senders to authenticate their emails by including a digital signature in the email header. This can be achieved by adding the TXT record in the sender's domain DNS settings.
In simple terms, SPF prevents an unauthorized persons from sending an email on your behalf. DKIM looks for a signature sent by the sender and allows you to smooth the transfer of emails through spam filters.
Follow the Gsuite guide on how to Authenticate your domain
10. Warm-up is caffeine
You should always warm up your mailbox when it is brand new by sending emails to trusted recipients(previous clients, friends from other organizations having Gmail, Office accounts both personal and business) and receiving opens and replies.
Always start sending emails in low numbers at first and then gradually increase the no. of emails to be delivered in a day.
If some schedule works for you, try to stick to that schedule and avoid sending thousands of emails a day.
Conclusion :
So, once you feel you've followed all the above tips and set up everything, send an email to one of your test emails to see if it is reaching the test mailbox.
we suggest you maintain some test emails of other mail clients like Gmail, Office, etc., and perform testing when you doubt your deliverability.