How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’
of 20
/20
Embed Size (px)
Transcript of How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes |
1
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 2
Table of Contents
Authentication Permissions
Engagement Know Your Audience - Relevance, Frequency & Content Review
Unsubscribe Links
Conclusion
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 3
Why would my emails never make it to their destination?
As we move further into the era of technology, email has become
the primary source of professional communication. As a result, bad
actors are doing whatever it takes to get you to view their emails.
How many members of the Nigerian royal family have contacted you
to transfer their fortune to your bank account?
In response to more frequent attempts to phish, hack, and send
spam, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are doing everything they
can to protect their customers from potentially unsolicited email,
including blocking bulk email sends from new domains and internet
protocol (IP) addresses. It’s important to remember that ISPs are
always looking to protect their users (and investors).
Because you’re sending emails to reach out to your prospects, these
new measures have a direct impact on your ability to have your
legitimate emails delivered to the inbox.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 4
Ultimately it is the practices of your company, and your engagement
strategy, that determines whether or not your messages get through.
There are three primary categories which, when combined, affect
Authentication & Sender Reputation Monitoring & Cleanliness Engagement
your ability to connect with your prospects. This guide will dive deep
into each category, from behind-the-scenes activity to reviewing how
you engage with prospects.
Ultimately it is the practices of your company, and your engagement strategy, that determines whether or not your messages get through.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 5
Authentication
Email authentication is a technical standard that lets you verify
that you are who you say you are so you aren’t flagged as spam
or a spoof (someone phishing for personal information). Without
email authentication, bad actors can change their email addresses
and copy the branding of legitimate senders in an attempt to steal
personal information.
Often, email authentication is put in place by your Information
Technology (IT) team. Your IT team can configure your mail servers
such that when an email is received by your prospect, their email
server can check the message you sent and compare it to the rules
put in place by your IT team. Gmail and Microsoft usually set up
these policies for you when your mailbox is configured, but it’s good
to check before you start sending a large number of emails. If you’re
using Exchange, your IT team may manage your on-premise server,
so you’ll need to work with them ensure you have SPF and DKIM
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 6
Email Authentication is created through three standards: SPF, DKIM,
and DMARC.
1. DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an authentication protocol
that’s used by email receivers/domains to determine if the
sender is really who they say they are. The domain key is a
specialized key that can be used only by one particular sender.
As a result, it goes a long way to reassure your prospect’s
mailbox that your message is legitimate, and not a fake. This will
contribute positively toward your anti-spam score.
2. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is closely tied to DKIM. It’s
an email validation system that’s designed to prevent email
spam and to authenticate senders. SPF looks at the sender
IP address and checks to ensure that the mail is coming from
an authenticated and verified sender. If an email comes from
somewhere that isn’t listed in the SPF record, the incoming
server can assume it was spoofed or otherwise illegitimate and
reject it as spam.
Conformance) is another email authentication protocol that
allows senders and receivers to report domains that may be
sending fraudulent mail. DMARC policies let the sender indicate
that their messages are authenticated with SPF and DKIM, and
can give instructions on what to do in the event that the sender
is not verified (send to spam, reject the email entirely, etc.)
tracks resonated the most, what was the best time to reach out,
etc? The only thing better than having a great quarter is knowing
with full confidence that every future quarter will be just as great.
What can you do? DKIM and SPF should be a standard part of your
basic technical setup requirements; DMARC can be considered an
additional option. Reach out to your IT team to verify that SPF, DKIM,
and DMARC have been set up. If not, encourage them to authenticate
your email.
The only thing better than having a great quarter is knowing with full confidence that every future quarter will be just as great.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 7
Permissions
Receiving permission to deliver emails can improve your overall
engagement and deliverability. This is commonly known as “opting-
in”. Opt-ins are either implicit or explicit consent to engage with
an individual prospect. For example, the individual may belong to
a company that is already a customer, or perhaps they filled out
a form to sign up for a webinar. Sending emails to prospects that
have granted you permission to contact them will result in stronger
engagement (opens, clicks, replies). This benefits your sender
reputation because engagement is the #1 factor email providers look
at when determining inbox placements.
This isn’t to say that cold emails are bad, they simply require extra
care. Researching and personalizing email campaigns, and sharing
relevant content with prospects that have not implicitly or explicitly
opted-in, will help ensure they don’t click the “this is spam” button.
Remember, ISPs watch how their customers interact with every
email. If they notice that a lot of people mark your email as spam,
they’ll start sending your emails directly to the junk folder.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 8
What can you do? Don’t buy lists of prospects, which are likely
filled with spam traps, bad data, and contain names and emails of
individuals who have not given you implicit or express permission
to contact them. It’s less likely prospects will engage with your
email if they have not, in some form, asked for the content you’re
sending them.
If you are prospecting to unengaged users, consider using LinkedIn
to create the initial point of contact and build trust with your
prospect before suggesting moving over to email. Once you’ve added
them to an email campaign, make sure you target specific personas
and take the time to research and personalize your emails (and
include an unsubscribe link if sending emails in bulk!).
A word of caution: rules on cold emailing vary from country to
country (i.e. GDPR), and even state to state. Please ensure you are
complying with all applicable laws. Furthermore, the information
contained in this guide does not constitute legal advice and
should not be used as such. We recommend you consult with the
appropriate legal counsel for that purpose.
Target specific personas and take the time to research and personalize your emails
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 9
Reputation
Sender Reputation
Your ability to get email delivered is directly tied to your reputation
as an email sender, which has become more important as bad actors
adopt more strategic ways to appear as legitimate senders. Your
sender reputation is a measurement of your email practices and
how trustworthy your IPs and domains are according to ISPs and
spam filters. The stronger your reputation, the more likely it is that
you’re correspondence will land in the inbox. Sender reputation is
determined by evaluating a few key characteristics:
1. Complaints - How many emails from your IP address land in a
prospect’s inbox, but are then marked as spam and deleted?
2. Volume - Do you have a high number of complaints relative to
the number of emails you send? Your aim is to send a reasonable
number of emails and limit the amount of complaints.
3. Reputation - How does your IP address compare to others?
Are any listed on external blacklists? Your goal is to have an
IP address that is not listed on external blacklists and ranked
higher than other IP addresses that are being monitored.
4. Rejections - How many of your emails bounce compared
to others?
When an email is sent to a prospect, the sender reputation is
considered by the mailbox and filtered into the inbox, the spam folder,
or rejected entirely. This decision is based on the prospect’s mailbox
configuration, which is often controlled by their IT teams. For example,
some companies will reject all mail with a sender reputation beneath
a specified threshold, while others may allow, AKA “whitelist,” IP
addresses with Sender Scores above a certain threshold.
In addition, your sender reputation may be used to throttle deliveries
from an IP address to an inbox. IP addresses with higher reputations
may be permitted to send more messages to an inbox than IP
addresses with low reputations.
What can you do? There are lots of online resources that let you
measure your sender reputation. Engage with one of these resources
to monitor your sender reputation. If you aren’t happy with the
result, make adjustments to your email strategies and campaigns.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 10
Cleanliness & Monitoring
List Source
There are inherent risks to deliverability when sending content to
purchased email addresses. In general, purchased lists contain
names and email addresses of prospects that have not opted-in
to your email communication, which, as we explained above, may
cause negative interactions with your emails in the best case, or
result in hefty fines and penalties.
In addition, purchased lists may also include spam traps, which
are fraud management tools used by ISPs and blacklists to identify
bad actors. Spam traps are never obvious. That’s why they’re called
traps! Some ISPs and blacklists plant realistic email addresses that
have never been used or opted into a mailing list. Regardless, getting
caught by a spam trap can cause a headache, with consequences
ranging from a temporary block on your domain, IP pool re-
assignment, and ultimately less access to inboxes.
Purchasing lists will damage your sender reputation, and potentially
add your domain to a blacklist, which are notoriously difficult to get
off of.
What can you do? Build your own email lists or scrub email lists
using a reputable list hygiene provider. This will help ensure that
the list you’re using contains valid email addresses that do not pose
a reputation threat. If you do purchase lists, make sure you verify
the data before trusting the source where the data was purchased.
You should not assume that the data provider you use follows email
hygiene best practices; it is your domain reputation that will be
affected by sending to bad emails.
Spam traps are never obvious. That’s why they’re called traps!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 11
New Domain Address Warming
Think of using a new domain like starting a car in the middle of
winter. Before you get into your car, you probably want to warm
it up for a few minutes. Warming your car helps you scrape the
ice off of your windshield, allows the engine to reach the optimal
operating temperature, and keeps you warm on your commute. In
a similar vein, you need to warm up your new domain to encourage
deliverability. ISPs pay attention to your activities, and are
suspicious of new domains with high send volumes. Warming up
your domain let’s you establish your identity and gain the trust of
your ISP, which has a positive effect on your sender reputation and
overall deliverability.
Your company’s domain (i.e. @acmecorp.com) will transcend the
email platform you use. That is, you’ll likely take your domain name
when you leave an email provider, like transitioning from Gmail to
Office 365, but not the actual IP address. For that reason, email
providers tend to attribute more degrees of reputation to the domain
and look for other possible “spammy” trends.
Think of using a new domain like starting a car in the middle of winter. Before you get into your car, you probably want to warm it up for a few minutes... In a similar vein, you need to warm up your new domain to encourage deliverability.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 12
What can you do? Before taking action, you should review the
following with your IT team:
1. How old is your domain? Every domain has its own reputation,
and the reputation the domain is assigned is dependant on many
factors, one of which is age. Spam filters check a domain’s age.
When it’s younger than a month, they will mark it as suspicious
by default; when you send messages from a suspicious domain,
your messages are treated as suspicious too. We recommend
using a domain that is more than six months old.
2. What does your sending history look like? If your domain was
used in the past for email marketing, or had a historically poor
reputation, you won’t want to use this domain for your outreach.
3. What Domain is your IT Team using for DKIM? If possible,
we recommend your IT team use subdomains when signing
DKIM. It helps sustain better reputation on the top level, since
marketing and sales emails send higher volumes of email and,
as a result, receive more complaints.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 13
When you’ve reviewed the last section, you’re ready to ramp up your
domain. This is a two-step process: Slowly ramping up the number of
email deliveries and actively monitoring email engagement.
1. Ramp up Email Sends - Once you have a new domain address,
you need to slowly re-introduce yourself to sending email
campaigns. The warming process should take close to 30 days,
but will vary depending on your volume, frequency of emails
sent, and the quality of your prospect list. This means sending
emails from the new domain in smaller volumes, using a
targeted and engaged segment of your database, and gradually
increasing the volume. Each day, increase the volume until
you’re back to your regular email send rate, doubling your send
volume every three or four days.
2. Monitor your Campaigns - Gradually increasing email volume
is only part of warming up your domain. The other piece to
consider is the content of the emails you’re sending, and what
engagement with those emails looks like. Are you sending emails
that aren’t being opened and clicked? Have you reached your
average reply rate? The higher the engagement with your emails,
the better your credibility with your ISP.
Don’t worry if the first week of sending from your new domain
doesn’t seem to be landing your emails in the inbox. Since you
don’t have a sender history on your new domain, it’s natural for
your emails to encounter some roadblocks. In addition, some email
providers deliver a portion of the emails you’re sending to the spam
folder to see if your prospects save it and mark it as “not spam”.
Your email provider sees this as a good indication that you’re a
legitimate sender.
When you’ve reviewed the last section, you’re ready to ramp up your domain.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 14
Review Bounces
You will receive bounced email notifications when you send an email
and it is denied entrance to your prospect’s email server.
There are two primary bounce types: hard bounces and
soft bounces.
You can identify the bounce type by reading the bounce message
sent to your inbox by the prospect’s server. The message attached
to the email will vary, since they are created and managed by each
company’s IT team. However, the bounce number will indicate the
type of bounce you’ve received:
5.x.x errors are hard bounces
4.x.x are soft bounces.
Hard bounces mean the email address no longer exists, or never
existed at all. All other reasons an email would bounce are considered
soft bounces. Soft bounces are most frequently received because
your prospect’s email server is down, their mailbox is full, etc.
ISPs are looking for IPs that have a lot of hard bounces. A “clean”
email list has under a 1% bounce rate. Any more than that, it
becomes more clear to email filters that you’re sending emails to
stale email addresses. If you hit more than 5%, we recommend
finding a list validation service to review your emails prior to sending
them any messages. If more than 10% of your emails receive a hard
bounce error, the ISP will start to block your emails.
What can you do? Review bounce messages you receive to
determine if they’re hard or soft. Remove hard bounces from your
email campaign and try to keep soft bounces under 5% and under
1% for hard bounces for every email campaign.
If you send a large volume of emails, you can use something like
Postmaster Tools to see if customers and prospects are marking
your emails as spam, why your emails might not be delivered, if your
emails are being sent securely, and whether you’re following your
email provider’s best practices. The availability of tools will vary
based on your email provider.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 15
Monitoring Blacklists
Blacklists are lists of domain names or IP addresses of identified
“spammers” that are compiled into a list for email servers to
reference. If an email server sees your domain name or IP address on
a blacklist, they’ll block your emails, and your prospects may never
know you were trying to contact them. That’s bad for business.
Think of your domain and IP address as a return address on the
envelope of a letter. Every email that you send has your return address
(IP address and domain) logged. Mail servers can check the return
address against a number of public and private blacklists. If the server
sees your return address on one or more of these lists, your email will
likely end up in a junk or spam folder, or rejected all together.
What can you do? Follow email best practices to keep your sender
reputation high. Make sure you monitor blacklists so you know if
your IP address and domain end up on a list, even if by mistaken
(this happens more than you think). There are a number of tools
that you can use to check your IP and domain against well-known
blacklists. If you are blacklisted, you’ll need to submit a request
to the blacklist to have your IP address and domain removed. This
is done by applying for a “delisting” from the specific blacklist in
question, usually completed on the blacklists’ websites. If there is no
delisting option, there may be a timer associated with the blacklist,
which removes your email after a certain amount of time has passed,
the email traffic slows, or complaints drop.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 15
Think of your domain and IP address as a return address on the envelope of a letter.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 16
Follow the Rules - CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR & CCPA
Data privacy is a big topic as governments begin to understand the
wide scope of ways data can be used to persuade consumers. As a
result, laws are being passed that give individuals the right to opt
out of email communication and have their data deleted. There are
significant consequences for violating these regulations, including
massive fines for violating the terms of GDPR.
What can you do? Make sure you understand the laws in your
country, the countries you are prospecting into, and the rights of
individuals in foreign countries (especially the European Union). For
CAN-SPAM, this might mean including your company’s address and
an unsubscribe link in all of your emails. For GDPR, you’ll need to
ensure that the individuals you are emailing have opted into your
communication. By complying to the appropriate regulations, you’ll
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 17
Engagement
Know Your Audience - Relevance, Frequency & Content Review
The way prospects engage with your content is a good indicator of whether or not:
1. Your emails are landing in your prospects’ inboxes.
2. The emails you’re sending are being well-received by your
prospects. Low open rates, click rates, and reply rates are a
clear signal to your ISP that your prospects aren’t engaged,
which can factor into the deliverability of future emails
What can you do? Pay attention to your engagement metrics
(emails, clicks, and replies). Engagement-based metrics measure
how your prospects are interacting with your content. If you notice
your metrics are lower than usual, make adjustments to the content
and subject lines of your email to improve engagement and limit
the negative interactions. A/B testing subject lines and email copy
can help determine what’s working best for your goals. If you see a
decline in opens, clicks, and replies, make adjustments. This may
mean adjusting the cadence you send emails, when you send your
emails (morning vs. afternoon), or retiring content that you’ve used
in the past for fresher material.
Target your campaigns to the persona that you’re engaging. For
example, a CEO likely won’t be as interested in setting up a swag
store as a customer marketing manager. By shaping your campaigns
to meet the needs of your buyer, you’ll encourage stronger
engagement.
Furthermore, consider the volume of emails you’re sending to
your prospects. Rather than sending an email blast to all of your
customers, consider creating a funnel that allows a certain number
of emails to send per campaign per day. This ensures your follow-up
tasks don’t become uncontrollable and prevents your prospects from
becoming fatigued, making them more likely to complain about your
emails and mark them as spam.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 18
Unsubscribe Links
In email, there are two different categories that define the type of email you’re sending to your prospects: transactional/operational
and promotional.
an agreed-upon transaction, or provides updates to a prospect
about an ongoing transaction. These emails may include password
reset emails, contract redline updates, a purchase receipt, and
important notifications. These are emails that provide a prospect with
information they’ve requested, and are probably sent individually,
rather than as part of an email campaign. In general, transactional/
operational emails contain information that the prospect has
specifically requested.
primary purpose is to advertise or promote a commercial product
or service. This can include sales emails, product announcements,
newsletters, and re-engagement emails. The goal of promotional
emails is to encourage the prospect to take an action in your favor,
such as purchasing your product, downloading your content, or
attending an event.
Promotional emails are subject to certain legal requirements, such as
the CAN-SPAM Act, CASL, and GDPR. Part of these requirements, and
a best practice to maintain your sender reputation, is to include an
unsubscribe or opt-out link.
What can you do? Unsubscribe links are a mechanism for your
prospects to tell you that they know longer wish to receive emails
from you. By providing an unsubscribe link, you’re ensuring that you
do not continue to contact prospects that have specifically requested
that you stop.
Similarly, by including a clear and easy-to-use unsubscribe link, you’ll
limit the number of prospects that complain to your ISP and mark
your email as spam.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 19
Conclusion
Email deliverability is a complex subject, but boils down to one
big theme: ISPs are always looking out for the best interest of their
customers. Their goal is to make sure relevant emails land in their
customers’ inboxes, while unwanted emails are sent to spam folders
or are rejected entirely.
While there are a number of items to consider when reviewing your
success metrics, your sender reputation should be at the top of the
list. Knowing where your sender reputation stands is the biggest
indicator of whether or not your emails will land in the inbox. If your
reputation is lower than you would like, you can make proactive
adjustments to your emails, practices, and email systems to improve
the chances that you land in the inbox.
By constantly reviewing the three categories outlined in this
document—authentication and sender reputation, monitoring and
cleanliness, and engagement—you’ll have a better shot at landing
email in your prospects’ inboxes.
Email deliverability is a complex subject, but boils down to one big theme: ISPs are always looking out for the best interest of their customers.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 19
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 20
Outreach.io / tweet us: @outreach_io
Ready to learn more?
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 2
Table of Contents
Authentication Permissions
Engagement Know Your Audience - Relevance, Frequency & Content Review
Unsubscribe Links
Conclusion
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 3
Why would my emails never make it to their destination?
As we move further into the era of technology, email has become
the primary source of professional communication. As a result, bad
actors are doing whatever it takes to get you to view their emails.
How many members of the Nigerian royal family have contacted you
to transfer their fortune to your bank account?
In response to more frequent attempts to phish, hack, and send
spam, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are doing everything they
can to protect their customers from potentially unsolicited email,
including blocking bulk email sends from new domains and internet
protocol (IP) addresses. It’s important to remember that ISPs are
always looking to protect their users (and investors).
Because you’re sending emails to reach out to your prospects, these
new measures have a direct impact on your ability to have your
legitimate emails delivered to the inbox.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 4
Ultimately it is the practices of your company, and your engagement
strategy, that determines whether or not your messages get through.
There are three primary categories which, when combined, affect
Authentication & Sender Reputation Monitoring & Cleanliness Engagement
your ability to connect with your prospects. This guide will dive deep
into each category, from behind-the-scenes activity to reviewing how
you engage with prospects.
Ultimately it is the practices of your company, and your engagement strategy, that determines whether or not your messages get through.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 5
Authentication
Email authentication is a technical standard that lets you verify
that you are who you say you are so you aren’t flagged as spam
or a spoof (someone phishing for personal information). Without
email authentication, bad actors can change their email addresses
and copy the branding of legitimate senders in an attempt to steal
personal information.
Often, email authentication is put in place by your Information
Technology (IT) team. Your IT team can configure your mail servers
such that when an email is received by your prospect, their email
server can check the message you sent and compare it to the rules
put in place by your IT team. Gmail and Microsoft usually set up
these policies for you when your mailbox is configured, but it’s good
to check before you start sending a large number of emails. If you’re
using Exchange, your IT team may manage your on-premise server,
so you’ll need to work with them ensure you have SPF and DKIM
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 6
Email Authentication is created through three standards: SPF, DKIM,
and DMARC.
1. DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an authentication protocol
that’s used by email receivers/domains to determine if the
sender is really who they say they are. The domain key is a
specialized key that can be used only by one particular sender.
As a result, it goes a long way to reassure your prospect’s
mailbox that your message is legitimate, and not a fake. This will
contribute positively toward your anti-spam score.
2. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is closely tied to DKIM. It’s
an email validation system that’s designed to prevent email
spam and to authenticate senders. SPF looks at the sender
IP address and checks to ensure that the mail is coming from
an authenticated and verified sender. If an email comes from
somewhere that isn’t listed in the SPF record, the incoming
server can assume it was spoofed or otherwise illegitimate and
reject it as spam.
Conformance) is another email authentication protocol that
allows senders and receivers to report domains that may be
sending fraudulent mail. DMARC policies let the sender indicate
that their messages are authenticated with SPF and DKIM, and
can give instructions on what to do in the event that the sender
is not verified (send to spam, reject the email entirely, etc.)
tracks resonated the most, what was the best time to reach out,
etc? The only thing better than having a great quarter is knowing
with full confidence that every future quarter will be just as great.
What can you do? DKIM and SPF should be a standard part of your
basic technical setup requirements; DMARC can be considered an
additional option. Reach out to your IT team to verify that SPF, DKIM,
and DMARC have been set up. If not, encourage them to authenticate
your email.
The only thing better than having a great quarter is knowing with full confidence that every future quarter will be just as great.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 7
Permissions
Receiving permission to deliver emails can improve your overall
engagement and deliverability. This is commonly known as “opting-
in”. Opt-ins are either implicit or explicit consent to engage with
an individual prospect. For example, the individual may belong to
a company that is already a customer, or perhaps they filled out
a form to sign up for a webinar. Sending emails to prospects that
have granted you permission to contact them will result in stronger
engagement (opens, clicks, replies). This benefits your sender
reputation because engagement is the #1 factor email providers look
at when determining inbox placements.
This isn’t to say that cold emails are bad, they simply require extra
care. Researching and personalizing email campaigns, and sharing
relevant content with prospects that have not implicitly or explicitly
opted-in, will help ensure they don’t click the “this is spam” button.
Remember, ISPs watch how their customers interact with every
email. If they notice that a lot of people mark your email as spam,
they’ll start sending your emails directly to the junk folder.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 8
What can you do? Don’t buy lists of prospects, which are likely
filled with spam traps, bad data, and contain names and emails of
individuals who have not given you implicit or express permission
to contact them. It’s less likely prospects will engage with your
email if they have not, in some form, asked for the content you’re
sending them.
If you are prospecting to unengaged users, consider using LinkedIn
to create the initial point of contact and build trust with your
prospect before suggesting moving over to email. Once you’ve added
them to an email campaign, make sure you target specific personas
and take the time to research and personalize your emails (and
include an unsubscribe link if sending emails in bulk!).
A word of caution: rules on cold emailing vary from country to
country (i.e. GDPR), and even state to state. Please ensure you are
complying with all applicable laws. Furthermore, the information
contained in this guide does not constitute legal advice and
should not be used as such. We recommend you consult with the
appropriate legal counsel for that purpose.
Target specific personas and take the time to research and personalize your emails
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 9
Reputation
Sender Reputation
Your ability to get email delivered is directly tied to your reputation
as an email sender, which has become more important as bad actors
adopt more strategic ways to appear as legitimate senders. Your
sender reputation is a measurement of your email practices and
how trustworthy your IPs and domains are according to ISPs and
spam filters. The stronger your reputation, the more likely it is that
you’re correspondence will land in the inbox. Sender reputation is
determined by evaluating a few key characteristics:
1. Complaints - How many emails from your IP address land in a
prospect’s inbox, but are then marked as spam and deleted?
2. Volume - Do you have a high number of complaints relative to
the number of emails you send? Your aim is to send a reasonable
number of emails and limit the amount of complaints.
3. Reputation - How does your IP address compare to others?
Are any listed on external blacklists? Your goal is to have an
IP address that is not listed on external blacklists and ranked
higher than other IP addresses that are being monitored.
4. Rejections - How many of your emails bounce compared
to others?
When an email is sent to a prospect, the sender reputation is
considered by the mailbox and filtered into the inbox, the spam folder,
or rejected entirely. This decision is based on the prospect’s mailbox
configuration, which is often controlled by their IT teams. For example,
some companies will reject all mail with a sender reputation beneath
a specified threshold, while others may allow, AKA “whitelist,” IP
addresses with Sender Scores above a certain threshold.
In addition, your sender reputation may be used to throttle deliveries
from an IP address to an inbox. IP addresses with higher reputations
may be permitted to send more messages to an inbox than IP
addresses with low reputations.
What can you do? There are lots of online resources that let you
measure your sender reputation. Engage with one of these resources
to monitor your sender reputation. If you aren’t happy with the
result, make adjustments to your email strategies and campaigns.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 10
Cleanliness & Monitoring
List Source
There are inherent risks to deliverability when sending content to
purchased email addresses. In general, purchased lists contain
names and email addresses of prospects that have not opted-in
to your email communication, which, as we explained above, may
cause negative interactions with your emails in the best case, or
result in hefty fines and penalties.
In addition, purchased lists may also include spam traps, which
are fraud management tools used by ISPs and blacklists to identify
bad actors. Spam traps are never obvious. That’s why they’re called
traps! Some ISPs and blacklists plant realistic email addresses that
have never been used or opted into a mailing list. Regardless, getting
caught by a spam trap can cause a headache, with consequences
ranging from a temporary block on your domain, IP pool re-
assignment, and ultimately less access to inboxes.
Purchasing lists will damage your sender reputation, and potentially
add your domain to a blacklist, which are notoriously difficult to get
off of.
What can you do? Build your own email lists or scrub email lists
using a reputable list hygiene provider. This will help ensure that
the list you’re using contains valid email addresses that do not pose
a reputation threat. If you do purchase lists, make sure you verify
the data before trusting the source where the data was purchased.
You should not assume that the data provider you use follows email
hygiene best practices; it is your domain reputation that will be
affected by sending to bad emails.
Spam traps are never obvious. That’s why they’re called traps!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 11
New Domain Address Warming
Think of using a new domain like starting a car in the middle of
winter. Before you get into your car, you probably want to warm
it up for a few minutes. Warming your car helps you scrape the
ice off of your windshield, allows the engine to reach the optimal
operating temperature, and keeps you warm on your commute. In
a similar vein, you need to warm up your new domain to encourage
deliverability. ISPs pay attention to your activities, and are
suspicious of new domains with high send volumes. Warming up
your domain let’s you establish your identity and gain the trust of
your ISP, which has a positive effect on your sender reputation and
overall deliverability.
Your company’s domain (i.e. @acmecorp.com) will transcend the
email platform you use. That is, you’ll likely take your domain name
when you leave an email provider, like transitioning from Gmail to
Office 365, but not the actual IP address. For that reason, email
providers tend to attribute more degrees of reputation to the domain
and look for other possible “spammy” trends.
Think of using a new domain like starting a car in the middle of winter. Before you get into your car, you probably want to warm it up for a few minutes... In a similar vein, you need to warm up your new domain to encourage deliverability.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 12
What can you do? Before taking action, you should review the
following with your IT team:
1. How old is your domain? Every domain has its own reputation,
and the reputation the domain is assigned is dependant on many
factors, one of which is age. Spam filters check a domain’s age.
When it’s younger than a month, they will mark it as suspicious
by default; when you send messages from a suspicious domain,
your messages are treated as suspicious too. We recommend
using a domain that is more than six months old.
2. What does your sending history look like? If your domain was
used in the past for email marketing, or had a historically poor
reputation, you won’t want to use this domain for your outreach.
3. What Domain is your IT Team using for DKIM? If possible,
we recommend your IT team use subdomains when signing
DKIM. It helps sustain better reputation on the top level, since
marketing and sales emails send higher volumes of email and,
as a result, receive more complaints.
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 13
When you’ve reviewed the last section, you’re ready to ramp up your
domain. This is a two-step process: Slowly ramping up the number of
email deliveries and actively monitoring email engagement.
1. Ramp up Email Sends - Once you have a new domain address,
you need to slowly re-introduce yourself to sending email
campaigns. The warming process should take close to 30 days,
but will vary depending on your volume, frequency of emails
sent, and the quality of your prospect list. This means sending
emails from the new domain in smaller volumes, using a
targeted and engaged segment of your database, and gradually
increasing the volume. Each day, increase the volume until
you’re back to your regular email send rate, doubling your send
volume every three or four days.
2. Monitor your Campaigns - Gradually increasing email volume
is only part of warming up your domain. The other piece to
consider is the content of the emails you’re sending, and what
engagement with those emails looks like. Are you sending emails
that aren’t being opened and clicked? Have you reached your
average reply rate? The higher the engagement with your emails,
the better your credibility with your ISP.
Don’t worry if the first week of sending from your new domain
doesn’t seem to be landing your emails in the inbox. Since you
don’t have a sender history on your new domain, it’s natural for
your emails to encounter some roadblocks. In addition, some email
providers deliver a portion of the emails you’re sending to the spam
folder to see if your prospects save it and mark it as “not spam”.
Your email provider sees this as a good indication that you’re a
legitimate sender.
When you’ve reviewed the last section, you’re ready to ramp up your domain.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 14
Review Bounces
You will receive bounced email notifications when you send an email
and it is denied entrance to your prospect’s email server.
There are two primary bounce types: hard bounces and
soft bounces.
You can identify the bounce type by reading the bounce message
sent to your inbox by the prospect’s server. The message attached
to the email will vary, since they are created and managed by each
company’s IT team. However, the bounce number will indicate the
type of bounce you’ve received:
5.x.x errors are hard bounces
4.x.x are soft bounces.
Hard bounces mean the email address no longer exists, or never
existed at all. All other reasons an email would bounce are considered
soft bounces. Soft bounces are most frequently received because
your prospect’s email server is down, their mailbox is full, etc.
ISPs are looking for IPs that have a lot of hard bounces. A “clean”
email list has under a 1% bounce rate. Any more than that, it
becomes more clear to email filters that you’re sending emails to
stale email addresses. If you hit more than 5%, we recommend
finding a list validation service to review your emails prior to sending
them any messages. If more than 10% of your emails receive a hard
bounce error, the ISP will start to block your emails.
What can you do? Review bounce messages you receive to
determine if they’re hard or soft. Remove hard bounces from your
email campaign and try to keep soft bounces under 5% and under
1% for hard bounces for every email campaign.
If you send a large volume of emails, you can use something like
Postmaster Tools to see if customers and prospects are marking
your emails as spam, why your emails might not be delivered, if your
emails are being sent securely, and whether you’re following your
email provider’s best practices. The availability of tools will vary
based on your email provider.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 15
Monitoring Blacklists
Blacklists are lists of domain names or IP addresses of identified
“spammers” that are compiled into a list for email servers to
reference. If an email server sees your domain name or IP address on
a blacklist, they’ll block your emails, and your prospects may never
know you were trying to contact them. That’s bad for business.
Think of your domain and IP address as a return address on the
envelope of a letter. Every email that you send has your return address
(IP address and domain) logged. Mail servers can check the return
address against a number of public and private blacklists. If the server
sees your return address on one or more of these lists, your email will
likely end up in a junk or spam folder, or rejected all together.
What can you do? Follow email best practices to keep your sender
reputation high. Make sure you monitor blacklists so you know if
your IP address and domain end up on a list, even if by mistaken
(this happens more than you think). There are a number of tools
that you can use to check your IP and domain against well-known
blacklists. If you are blacklisted, you’ll need to submit a request
to the blacklist to have your IP address and domain removed. This
is done by applying for a “delisting” from the specific blacklist in
question, usually completed on the blacklists’ websites. If there is no
delisting option, there may be a timer associated with the blacklist,
which removes your email after a certain amount of time has passed,
the email traffic slows, or complaints drop.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 15
Think of your domain and IP address as a return address on the envelope of a letter.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 16
Follow the Rules - CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR & CCPA
Data privacy is a big topic as governments begin to understand the
wide scope of ways data can be used to persuade consumers. As a
result, laws are being passed that give individuals the right to opt
out of email communication and have their data deleted. There are
significant consequences for violating these regulations, including
massive fines for violating the terms of GDPR.
What can you do? Make sure you understand the laws in your
country, the countries you are prospecting into, and the rights of
individuals in foreign countries (especially the European Union). For
CAN-SPAM, this might mean including your company’s address and
an unsubscribe link in all of your emails. For GDPR, you’ll need to
ensure that the individuals you are emailing have opted into your
communication. By complying to the appropriate regulations, you’ll
!
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 17
Engagement
Know Your Audience - Relevance, Frequency & Content Review
The way prospects engage with your content is a good indicator of whether or not:
1. Your emails are landing in your prospects’ inboxes.
2. The emails you’re sending are being well-received by your
prospects. Low open rates, click rates, and reply rates are a
clear signal to your ISP that your prospects aren’t engaged,
which can factor into the deliverability of future emails
What can you do? Pay attention to your engagement metrics
(emails, clicks, and replies). Engagement-based metrics measure
how your prospects are interacting with your content. If you notice
your metrics are lower than usual, make adjustments to the content
and subject lines of your email to improve engagement and limit
the negative interactions. A/B testing subject lines and email copy
can help determine what’s working best for your goals. If you see a
decline in opens, clicks, and replies, make adjustments. This may
mean adjusting the cadence you send emails, when you send your
emails (morning vs. afternoon), or retiring content that you’ve used
in the past for fresher material.
Target your campaigns to the persona that you’re engaging. For
example, a CEO likely won’t be as interested in setting up a swag
store as a customer marketing manager. By shaping your campaigns
to meet the needs of your buyer, you’ll encourage stronger
engagement.
Furthermore, consider the volume of emails you’re sending to
your prospects. Rather than sending an email blast to all of your
customers, consider creating a funnel that allows a certain number
of emails to send per campaign per day. This ensures your follow-up
tasks don’t become uncontrollable and prevents your prospects from
becoming fatigued, making them more likely to complain about your
emails and mark them as spam.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 18
Unsubscribe Links
In email, there are two different categories that define the type of email you’re sending to your prospects: transactional/operational
and promotional.
an agreed-upon transaction, or provides updates to a prospect
about an ongoing transaction. These emails may include password
reset emails, contract redline updates, a purchase receipt, and
important notifications. These are emails that provide a prospect with
information they’ve requested, and are probably sent individually,
rather than as part of an email campaign. In general, transactional/
operational emails contain information that the prospect has
specifically requested.
primary purpose is to advertise or promote a commercial product
or service. This can include sales emails, product announcements,
newsletters, and re-engagement emails. The goal of promotional
emails is to encourage the prospect to take an action in your favor,
such as purchasing your product, downloading your content, or
attending an event.
Promotional emails are subject to certain legal requirements, such as
the CAN-SPAM Act, CASL, and GDPR. Part of these requirements, and
a best practice to maintain your sender reputation, is to include an
unsubscribe or opt-out link.
What can you do? Unsubscribe links are a mechanism for your
prospects to tell you that they know longer wish to receive emails
from you. By providing an unsubscribe link, you’re ensuring that you
do not continue to contact prospects that have specifically requested
that you stop.
Similarly, by including a clear and easy-to-use unsubscribe link, you’ll
limit the number of prospects that complain to your ISP and mark
your email as spam.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 19
Conclusion
Email deliverability is a complex subject, but boils down to one
big theme: ISPs are always looking out for the best interest of their
customers. Their goal is to make sure relevant emails land in their
customers’ inboxes, while unwanted emails are sent to spam folders
or are rejected entirely.
While there are a number of items to consider when reviewing your
success metrics, your sender reputation should be at the top of the
list. Knowing where your sender reputation stands is the biggest
indicator of whether or not your emails will land in the inbox. If your
reputation is lower than you would like, you can make proactive
adjustments to your emails, practices, and email systems to improve
the chances that you land in the inbox.
By constantly reviewing the three categories outlined in this
document—authentication and sender reputation, monitoring and
cleanliness, and engagement—you’ll have a better shot at landing
email in your prospects’ inboxes.
Email deliverability is a complex subject, but boils down to one big theme: ISPs are always looking out for the best interest of their customers.
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 19
How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in Your Prospects’ Inboxes | 20
Outreach.io / tweet us: @outreach_io
Ready to learn more?
![How to Compel Your Prospects Open Your Emails Take … · [7Secrets] Again, the point is to have some consistent wording to your mailings so folks can quickly and easily identify](https://static.fdocuments.net/doc/165x107/5b0ac3237f8b9ac7678ce904/how-to-compel-your-prospects-open-your-emails-take-7secrets-again-the-point-is.jpg?t=1685734922)
