Cold Outreach Best Practices: Mastering Email Deliverability

The Importance of Deliverability in Cold Outreach

For any company doing sales, the process starts by connecting with a prospect. If you're relying on cold emails to start conversations with potential customers, Swayle has plenty of tips to help you get started. In this article, we're focusing on deliverability.

Deliverability is simply your emails' ability to reach the inbox of your prospects. It's crucial because if your email doesn't make it to the inbox, there's no chance of getting your message across. Think about it - when was the last time you checked your spam folder? 

Exactly.

Understanding Email Deliverability

What Affects Deliverability?

When you send an email, it goes through a series of checks by email service providers. These checks are designed to prevent harmful spam. Your ability to pass these checks determines your deliverability. Two key factors are crucial:

1. Sender Reputation

2. Email Authentication

Let's take a closer look at each.

Sender Reputation: Your Email Credit Score

Think of the sender reputation as your email's credit score. It's what email service providers use to decide if your emails belong in the inbox or the spam folder.

Several factors shape your sender reputation:

1. Email volume: Sudden increases can look suspicious.

2. Bounce rate: High rates suggest you're sending to outdated or incorrect addresses. We always recommend that you verify the email addresses in your campaign, and remove any addresses with an issue.

3. Complaint rates: Frequent spam reports will diminish your sender reputation. 

4. Engagement: Providers notice if people open, read, and interact with your emails. Make your message clear and relevant to increase engagement.

5. Blacklists: Getting on a blacklist will severely damage your sender reputation and render that sender domain useless. If that happens, you will need a new domain. 

Keep your sender reputation clean to ensure your emails land in your prospects inbox. 

Email Authentication: The Technical Side

Email authentication is a crucial aspect of proving your legitimacy to email service providers. It's determined by three main protocols:

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance):

Acts as a policy framework, telling receiving servers what to do with emails that fail authentication. It helps prevent email spoofing and phishing attempts.

Follow this guide to set it up in your Google workspace. 

SPF (Sender Policy Framework):

Specifies which mail servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. Helps prevent spammers from sending emails using your domain name.

Follow this guide to set it up in your Google workspace. 

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail):

Adds a digital signature to your emails, verifying that they haven't been tampered with in transit. Helps establish the authenticity of your emails.

Follow this guide to set it up in your Google workspace.

To check if your domain has these certificates, use a tool like mxtoolbox.com. If you're missing any of these, work with your IT team or email service provider to set them up. Proper email authentication significantly improves your chances of reaching the inbox.

Best Practices for Email Deliverability

The technical aspect may not be something you control as a salesperson so here are 5 tips that you can use as a salesperson to help keep a healthy domain reputation: 

1. Use multiple inboxes and warm up your domain:

Create a dedicated domain variation for outbound sales. We use getswayle.com and swayle.co for that purpose. Warm up new domains gradually. Tools like Warmbox, Lemwarm, or Mailwarm can help you by automating the process. When scaling, increase daily email volume by 10-15% per week. Ensure there are no sudden spikes. Rotate your sender inbox. When reaching out to prospects, make sure to switch between the sender email. This can easily be done in HubSpot.

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2. Monitor your bounce rate:

Your bounce rate is a key metric to keep low as it is an easy metric for email service providers to track. Spammers will have a high bounce rate. Aim to keep it below 1 %. If it exceeds 3 %, more emails will go to spam. This can be checked in HubSpot by going to sequences > analyse. There you will find the bounce rate. 

3. Be thoughtful with content:

Target the right people with relevant messages, as irrelevant content is more likely to be reported as spam. This part is important. There is a big difference between someone receiving a cold email with an offer that is relevant, but not interesting, and someone being offered to buy software for accounting while working in R&D.

4. Keep it simple:

Send plain text messages only and avoid links, images, or videos to reduce spam filter triggers. 

5. Don't overdo it:

Limit yourself to around 30 emails per day per mailbox. Remember that excessive sending can hurt your sender reputation.

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Should you add email tracking?

A lot of providers include the option to track your outgoing emails, to see open rates and click rates. They track this by including an image pixel in the email. However, plain text emails get better delivery rates, so the tracking-image may hurt your deliverability. Disabling the tracking mean that you can not track open rates, but open rate is not a reliable metric. It is better to track reply rates instead.

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Should you add an unsubscribe link?

An unsubscribe link may also hurt your deliverability. As mentioned, plain text emails are less suspicious to spam filters. You must include an easy way for the recipient to opt-out of further communication, but do it in plain text and try to be homoures about it.

An example would be: 

Do you want me to shut up? Reply "No" to this email .

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Conclusion: Elevating Your Cold Outreach Strategy

Mastering email deliverability is crucial for effective cold outreach, but it's just the first step. By implementing the best practices we've discussed – from robust email authentication to crafting thoughtful content and adopting strategic sending practices – you can significantly enhance your ability to reach prospects' inboxes. However, the true goal is to provide value to your recipients. 

Relevant, tailored content not only engages prospects more effectively but also bolsters your sender reputation over time.

While optimizing deliverability seems challenging, modern AI-powered platforms can streamline the process, helping create tailored content at scale. Ultimately, successful cold outreach strikes a balance between technical expertise and authentic relationship-building. By focusing on both deliverability and relevancy, you're laying the foundation for great conversations.

As you refine your approach, remember that getting into the inbox is just the beginning. It's what you do once you're there that truly counts. With persistence and the right strategies, your cold outreach efforts can evolve from mere communication attempts to powerful drivers of business growth. As for persistence, you should use sequencing tools to make your job easier. Learn more about sequences here. 

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