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


Table of Contents

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Why Aren’t My Emails Getting Through?

Authentication Permissions

Reputation Sender Reputation

Cleanliness & Monitoring List Source

New Domain Address Warming

Review Bounces

Monitoring Blacklists

Follow the Rules - CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR & CCPA

Engagement Know Your Audience - Relevance, Frequency & Content Review

Unsubscribe Links

Conclusion


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.

!


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.


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

(more on those in a moment) set up prior to sending mailings.

!


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.

3. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting &

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.


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.


!


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


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.


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!


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.


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.


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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.


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.


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.


Think of your domain and IP address as a return address on the envelope of a letter.


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

limit the number of complaints against your domain, helping ensure

your emails land where you want them - in the inbox.

!


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.


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.

Transactional/operational email is email content that helps facilitate

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.

Alternatively, promotional emails are defined as a message whose

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.


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.



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