If the email gets classified as spam, it\u2019s not delivered at all or it\u2019s not delivered where it should be. And so, email deliverability suffers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The more of our emails are classified as spam, the fewer of them are delivered, and the lower the effectiveness of our campaign (not to mention the reputation of our email address and our domain as a whole).<\/span><\/p>\n So\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Yes. We should follow some rules to ensure that our emails are delivered to the place we want them to be: our prospect\u2019s main inbox.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the rules are based on people\u2019s opinions about what we send them, and those are basically common-sense rules. Some of the rules stem from bots\u2019 (or filters\u2019) assessment of the content of our emails and the way we send them.<\/span><\/p>\n The general rule that sums up the whole pro-deliverability approach is:<\/span><\/p>\n If we want high email deliverability, we need to ensure our prospects do not see our emails as spam. Simply speaking, we want our prospects to like our emails, and we want the filters to classify our messages as \u201cwanted.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Check also:<\/span><\/p>\n Below, I listed eleven rules that will help us boost the email deliverability of our cold outreach \u2013 that is, help us avoid being classified as spam by both people and bots.<\/span><\/p>\n There are more of them, but probably no one knows them all. These are the ones that we can easily and consciously abide by.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are the 11 rules within three areas we need to take care of:<\/span><\/p>\n Spammy words irritate both people and anti-spam systems. It\u2019s easy to fall into a trap here, as many of us don\u2019t even realize that spam filters may catch some words we normally use in our emails.<\/span><\/p>\n And when it comes to people\u2019s judgment, what sounds totally natural to us may feel pushy and salesy to our prospects. I guess this is something we need to learn by experience and by simply applying some empathetic filters to our copy.<\/span><\/p>\n The words that alarm email security can be checked out in some blog posts, like this one:<\/span><\/p>\n Should You Worry About SPAM Trigger Words? (Updated)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Lists of spam words are constantly updated. Even common words like \u201cmarketing\u201d or \u201cincrease\u201d are now on the list. Or your industry words. This is especially prevalent in real estate, tax office, or digital agency, see this:<\/span> A Pain of Cold Emailing In Finance\/Real Estate, and How to Overcome It? >><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n I always knew that was a good practice, but I\u2019ve never wondered about the reasons behind that rule. Until now. Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve found out from the<\/span> Pure360<\/span><\/a> whitepaper on how to improve email deliverability:<\/span><\/p>\n Once upon a time, some \u201cevil geniuses\u201d of spam thought that they could avoid being junked by anti-spam filters for the words in their emails if they didn\u2019t use words per se.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why they started sending messages in the form of huge pictures. When email providers noticed the pattern \u201chuge image, little text\u201d, they added it to their spam protection.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s also an interesting section on using links in emails in the same whitepaper, which is why we should be cautious with that.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why putting pics and links in our cold emails may irritate spam prevention of some email providers. And that is why we should limit those to the minimum. Keep things simple, depend on a natural and pure message based on words<\/span><\/p>\n If you need more proof, read this:<\/span> What is the Risk of Putting Image\/Video into B2B Email? >><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n This one can make your addressees really pissed off. And pissed addressees will most probably mark your message as spam. The more of them do that, the faster your email domain will get blacklisted.<\/span><\/p>\n So don\u2019t make promises about the subject that your message will not keep. Don\u2019t mislead your addressees to get impressive open rates. Focus on the quality of your outreach as a whole. Send messages that are honest and provide real value to your prospects. From the subject to the signature.<\/span><\/p>\n For more inspiration for subject lines, check out<\/span> this blog post<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n How do we recognize bulk messages? They are all the same. Or almost the same. They could be sent to thousands of people with practically no alterations in the body of the message.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And because of the easily recognizable pattern, it\u2019s easy to learn a bot to recognize that as well. Both people and filters get irritated by bulk email leaflets, including impersonal offers.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why it\u2019s crucial to personalize our emails as much as possible. Putting the addressee’s first name at the beginning is not good enough.<\/span><\/p>\n When sending a cold email campaign from Woodpecker, I do use templates. But my templates usually involve 3-4<\/span> custom fields and snippets<\/span><\/a>, sometimes whole sentences. That allows me to make my messages personal and tailor-made for my prospects.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n As a result, the prospects feel that they are the center of my message and that I cared enough to find out something about them before I reached out. At the same time, each of the emails sent within the same cold email campaign is different, so the filters accept this as a personal message as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n People are happy, bots are happy, and I am happy because of high deliverability and high response rates.<\/span><\/p>\n To diversify the content of your messages even more, you can prepare different versions of each email in your sequence.<\/span> Read about how to do that in Woodpecker >><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n If we have a low-quality list of contacts \u2013 that is, if a significant part of the email addresses we send our emails to don\u2019t exist, lots of our emails will be bounced. The bounce rate affects email deliverability to a great extent. A high number of <\/span>hard bounces<\/span><\/i> (due to a non-existent email address) may get our domain blacklisted.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why we should always make sure that our contact base is well-verified and up-to-date. You shouldn’t simply guess email addresses.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the great things about<\/span> Woodpecker<\/span><\/a> is that your prospects\u2019 emails are pre-checked before you send them your first email.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The addresses that most probably are wrong or don\u2019t exist are automatically marked as INVALID, and none of our messages will be sent to them to decrease the hard bounce rate to a minimum.<\/span><\/p>\n Low bounce rates protect your email domain from getting blacklisted.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you\u2019ve set up a brand new email address for your outbound email campaigns, it\u2019s important to get it \u201c<\/span>warmed-up<\/span><\/a>\u201d before sending more messages. That’s email warm-up \u2013 you start slow and gradually increase the number of messages sent a day, to make sure your domain won\u2019t get classified as a potential source of spam.<\/span><\/p>\n This also stems from the spammers\u2019 practices. How often have you received cold email spam from an email address like company023@gmail.com or company11@company.com? Have you ever wondered why people need email addresses with ordinals?<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s probably because they send hundreds of emails from each of their multiple email accounts, get junked, or banned by their email provider, and they quickly need another email address to send the emails from.<\/span><\/p>\n Again, keep it natural when it comes to numbers. How many emails would you be able to send a day if you sent them manually one by one? Focus on quality rather than quantity, and more of your emails will be delivered.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s a continuation of the previous rule.<\/span> Bulk emails<\/span><\/a> are sent in batches of hundreds at once. Whichever tool you use to send your emails automatically, make sure it doesn\u2019t send too many messages simultaneously. That\u2019s not human-like behavior. And<\/span> the filters are sensitive to that<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n One significant advantage of Woodpecker is that it sends emails like you would send them yourself. There\u2019s no way Woodpecker will send two messages at the same time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And the time intervals between consecutive messages will not be identical. For more details, check out one of my previous articles:<\/span> How Your Emails & Follow-ups Will Be Sent by Woodpecker >><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Avoid being caught by spam filters and pausing your campaigns. Of course, you should not do this manually, as it is tedious and pointless to copy and paste the same campaigns and then send them from different mailboxes.<\/span><\/p>\n Woodpecker allows you to add multiple mailboxes to your campaign and rotate the sending between the added addresses using the<\/span> Inbox Rotation<\/b><\/a> feature. Since spam filters are getting increasingly brutal these days, it\u2019s better not to exceed sending limits.<\/span> See how to send from multiple accounts in Woodpecker.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n If your emails stop landing in inboxes, nothing else matters. No opens, no clicks, no replies. Just silence.<\/span><\/p>\n The trouble is,<\/span> deliverability issues<\/span><\/a> don\u2019t come with warning lights. You won\u2019t know your domain\u2019s slipping until it\u2019s too late \u2013 maybe a bunch of invalid email addresses, maybe a spike in spam complaints, maybe your SPF record\u2019s off.<\/span><\/p>\n Suddenly, your cold emails are going straight to the junk pile.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why Woodpecker\u2019s<\/span> Deliverability Monitor<\/span><\/a> matters. It checks your bounce rate, sender reputation, and other red flags behind the scenes. So when your reply rate drops, you don\u2019t have to guess why.<\/span><\/p>\n To stay clean:<\/b><\/p>\n Keep monitoring email deliverability, and your emails will land where they should \u2013 right in your prospect\u2019s inbox. Let it slip, and you\u2019re handing control over to junk filters.<\/span><\/p>\n Before sending a single cold email, ensure your domain setup is airtight.<\/span><\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t matter how good your email template is \u2013 bad<\/span> SPF, DKIM, or DMARC<\/span><\/a> records will tank your cold email deliverability. Your message won\u2019t even hit the recipient\u2019s inbox. You\u2019ll be filtered out by email providers or dropped into the spam folder before you ever have a shot.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why it pays to run a<\/span> domain audit<\/span><\/a>. Woodpecker\u2019s Domain Audit tool checks whether your sender policy framework, domainkeys identified mail, and domain-based message authentication settings are in place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCan we influence our cold email deliverability?<\/b><\/h3>\n
Don\u2019t irritate people and spam filters.<\/b><\/h2>\n
What kind of emails are \u201cwanted\u201d?<\/b><\/h4>\n
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What kind of emails are \u201cunwanted\u201d?<\/b><\/h4>\n
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Why People Hate Cold Emails & How Can We Let Them Love Ours >><\/b><\/a><\/h4>\n
There are two easy ways to get classified as spam:<\/b><\/h4>\n
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What\u2019s in it for you?<\/b><\/h2>\n
Email content<\/b><\/h3>\n
Rule #1: Avoid spammy words<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #2: Limit links, videos, and pics<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #3: Beware of irrelevant subjects and messages<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #4: Pay attention to personalization<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"Template-opening-Wdpckr-interview\"](\"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/app\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Template-opening-Wdpckr-interview.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nList of prospects<\/b><\/h3>\n
Rule #5: Make sure you have a good quality list<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"Woodpecker-infogr-3\"](\"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/app\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Woodpecker-infogr-3.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSending setup<\/b><\/h3>\n
Rule #6: Warm up your email address<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #7: Don\u2019t send many emails at once<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #8: Send your campaign from multiple mailboxes<\/b><\/h4>\n
Rule #9: Keep an eye on deliverability \u2013 seriously<\/b><\/h4>\n
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Rule #10: Audit your domain before launching<\/b><\/h4>\n