check your deliverability
Checking your current deliverability is a great place to start, and gives you an idea of where you can improve. Depending on your deliverability score, you may decide to create a new domain, implement some new authenticators, purge your sender list, or warm-up your domain again. Here’s a great tool for checking your deliverability: https://www.palisade.email/tools/email-deliverability-score
domain name
Some domains are more likely to be flagged as spam than others. In order to prevent this, avoid using hyphens, numbers and words related to money, health, drugs, gambling and gaming. It’s beneficial to add a word before or after your brand, such as agency or consulting. If you can’t get a ‘.com’ domain, pick your country’s official one (“.co.uk”, “.de”), or the simple “.co”. This helps to create a unique brand identity, and improves your brand recognition down the line.
For each individual email address, the best format is “fullname@company.com”.
When sending cold emails, the best providers to avoid the spam folder are Google Workspace, Office 365 and Zoho – but make sure you don’t send more than 100 cold emails per day per email address!
Warm up and email content
Make sure you are warming up your domain straight away, and again before every large campaign. This is crucial for generating a positive reputation and improving later email deliverability. If you want to read more, check out our article on domain warmup!
It’s also important to personalize your email content by including your recipient’s name in your email list – start all emails with ‘Hi [First name]’, and mention their company name. When doing this, ensure you target the most relevant person for you in each company. Similarly to domain name creation, avoid using spam trigger words, aggressive punctuation, capital letters and links. Although it may sound counterintuitive, make sure you provide an easy-to-find unsubscribe link. By giving your audience the opportunity to unsubscribe, they are less likely to filter out your messages or mark them as spam. Since every spam report negatively affects your deliverability, it’s much better to have a few unsubscribers!
sender policy framework
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authenticates that your email has been sent from an authorized server e.g. the correct domain. This helps to identify your emails as legitimate, and flag emails from spoofers. It enables you to create a list of approved domains to minimize the risk of receiving malicious emails, as well as helping others to verify your domain’s authenticity. By using an SPF, your emails are less likely to be rejected as spam, improving your email deliverability.
Domainkeys identified mail (DKIM)
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) ensures your email is encrypted and verifies its source and integrity with a digital signature. This signature can be used to prevent email spoofing, allowing the receiver to check that the email is authorized by the domain owner. DKIM significantly improves the deliverability of your emails by giving your recipients proof that your email is trustworthy.
Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)
Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) allows senders to verify that their message is authentic, and protected by SPF and DKIM. The main benefit of DMARC is the prevention of fraudulent emails from your domain. This provides peace of mind to your recipients, thus improving email deliverability and increasing engagement rates.
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is basically the blue checkmark of email. BIMI is an email authentication that lets you display your brand logo next to the email content, making you stand out in your recipient’s inbox. By creating a BIMI record in your domain, every time your organization sends an email, your recipients will know it’s legitimate. Having your brand logo next to your emails improves brand recognition, increases trust and credibility, and reduces email impersonators. It works with other email authentication tools including SPF, DKIM and DMARC to improve email delivery and reduce email fraud. You need to set up these authenticators before adding BIMI, as these are what verify the legitimacy of your emails.
