In this article you will discover how to increase your email deliverability. Deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach your recipients' inboxes. We've put together some tips that will help your emails reach your recipient's inbox.
Setup your custom tracking domain so it is the same as your sending domain
Doing this will ensure you that tracking of sent emails is done from your own domain, and not from a shared domain.
When a domain is shared for tracking, you may "suffer" from other senders' sending reputation, and if they do not follow best practices about it, then this can decrease your emails deliverability.
When the domain used for tracking is the same as the domain used to send emails, you decrase the risk that your emails are perceived as unsolicitated.
To setup your custom tracking domain go on https://chappie.datananas.com/settings/email then on the sub-tab "Settings".
Then follow the dedicated tutorial : I setup my custom tracking domain
If you need help, feel free to reach us through the in-app chat.
Send emails to contacts who reply
Increasing the email volume gradually is a first step in warming up your email address. However, the reply rate that you will get has major impact on the deliverability. In order to increase this reply rate, we recommend you to contact people whose email address is verified and who are more likely to respond to you in the beginning. This will allow you to get a high response rate on small volumes of emails sent and thus increase your deliverability.
Your emails quotas
When synchronizing your email address, datananas automatically detects your email provider and consequently adjusts your generic quotas.
Be careful! These quotas only consider the technical side of sending emails, meaning they do not consider deliverability at all.
You'll find these quotas on this page (Email sub-tab), we strongly advise that you lower it until 15 emails per hour and 150 emails per day.
When adding contacts to a sequence, always try to pick lower sending quotas : 5 emails per hour and 80 emails per day (see the dedicated FAQ article to know how to). Indeed, as you keep adding databases and contacts to your sequence, the sending quotas increase until they reach your generic quotas. For instance, if you add 2 databases to a sequence using the 5/hour and 80/day quotas, you end up with 10 emails sent per hour and 160 per day (2*5 per hour and 2*80 per day)
In conclusion, generic quotas are the "glass ceiling" that you can never exceed, even if you add several thousands of contacts to your sequence.
Reputation & Authentification
The good reputation of your domain and your email server will prevent you from falling into the "spam box" of your prospects. It will also prevent the receiving server from simply blocking your message. To ensure a good reputation, here are a few tips:
Make sure you use a trusted email client and server: Gsuite and Gmail, Exchange and Outlook as well as OVH are very good solutions.
Get to know your prospects. If your e-mails are deleted unread or marked as spam, your reputation will be affected. On the contrary, if your prospects open, reply or forward your e-mails, your reputation will be enhanced and your ROI (openings, clicks, replies) will increase.
Give your prospects the choice to unsubscribe from your communications: A prospect who unsubscribes will have a minor impact on your business, but if he doesn't find the button he may well declare your email as spam and damage your reputation in the long run. To enable this link in your prospecting sequences on Datananas, go to our help center : GPDR - Unsubscribe link
Limit the number of simultaneous prospects within the same company, and avoid sending them emails in short time slots.
Clean your email lists regularly. Before adding contacts to sequence, do not hesitate to take a few minutes to have your e-mails checked to reduce your risk of bounces (see What is a bounce? ).
Send quality content. Do not use only capital letters in your objects (e.g. CONTACT). Avoid short URLs (e.g. bit.ly). Do not use "spam words" (e.g. "free", "promotion", "urgent", ... or "casino" or "100%").
Focus on the text in your emails : the content of your emails should be mostly text. If your emails are short and contain little text, make sure that your signature (image, link, etc.) is not too loaded with images. Also, never send an image alone or with very little text.
Use a professional and personal email. Using a free (e.g. gmail.com, hotmail.com, laposte.net, etc.) or generic (e.g. contact@company.com, hello@mycompany.fr, etc.) email address is both discouraged and not in compliance with the GPDR.
Avoid that the "From" field (i.e the sender of the email) includes a generic name ("Info", "Contact",...)
The "Subject" field onyl contains 3 caps-locked words, is empty or contains only one generic word ("Hello", "FREE", "BUY", "BUYING", etc.)
Focusing on the text of your email :
a) avoid one-word only emails ("Hello", "FREE", "BUY", "BUYING", etc.) or porn contnt
b) avoir enclosed exe files (EXE, BAT, PIF, XML, XLSX with a macro) even compressed, a clickable link redirecting to your content is way better
c) avoir one or several heavy images (> 1Mo)
d) avoid putting unsecure URLs (for instance : declared as https:// whereas the url only exists as a http://) or wrong or malicious URLs
f) avoid big and/or colourful and/or unusual typos
SPF, DKIM et DMARC
Although these three notions may seem frightening at first glance, it is important for you to understand them. Configuring these three indicators will allow you to increase your deliverability.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) - Policy and Issuance Rules
The main goal of SPF is to reduce the amount of SPAM that your client will receive in his mailbox. It is a standard verification of your domain name that allows you to know if a message sent comes from a valid or invalid sending email address.
The principle is to link the IP address of a mail server to its domain name in order to reduce identity theft attempts by publishing a so-called SPF record in the DNS.
To set up your SPF record from your Gmail address: click here
DKIM - DomainKeys Identified Mail
The DKIM can be compared to a signature on your email that will allow your client's server to verify that you are the sender of the email. DKIM does not prevent you from being sent in SPAM, but allows you to be more legitimate with the servers.
To set up your DKIM signature from your Gmail address: click here
DMARC - Domain based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance
DMARC is a synthesis between the SPF and the DKIM. It has 2 functions:
1. It indicates you what should be done with your message if authentication fails (let it pass, delete it, classify it as SPAM)
2. It allows you to be notified when authentication fails
To configure your DMARC registration from your Gmail address : click here
Test my email address
Test one or several email addresses
If you want to test your e-mails before launching your sequences, Mail-Tester will enlighten you on the best way to build your e-mail to avoid the spam box. It also sheds light on the authentication and reputation of your domain. Send your e-mail to the email address provided by the tool and you will know the score of your email address.
Test your domain and email server
If you want to test the domain name associated with your email address, you can go to mxtoolbox.com. You just need to fill in the domain name of your email address as it is shown in the example below and click on MX Lookup.
Then click on Find Problems
You will then be able to see the test results obtained with MX Toolbox. For some of the results, you can click on More Info for more information. By clicking on More Info you will be guided through the resolution of the problems you have encountered: presence in a blacklist, ...
In addition to the MX Toolbox, you will be able to check your IP and your domain by going to the following two websites: SpamHaus and Sender Score.
Keep an eye on your openings, clicks, responses and bounce rate
The weaker your tracking metrics are, the more you deteriorate your deliverability! You need to think about implementing a strategy to improve your rates, especially of openings and clicks. Unopened, unread then deleted, or spam-labeled emails can damage your reputation. On the contrary, if your prospects open, reply or forward your emails, your reputation will increase significantly as well as your deliverability and therefore your ROI (openings, clicks, replies).
Pay attention to content
Adding content (images, links,...) can improve your cold-email strateguy but be careful!
Links must always be added using hyperlinks (no raw links).
Also, before adding type of content , ask yourself : will this content bring more value to my email ? Will it allow to generate more conversations with my contacts ? What added value does it bring to my email ?
Finally, do not forget that some of your contacts may have blocking images mailboxes setup.