[Email deliverability checklist] Make sure people read your emails

Damaged sender reputation, missed opportunities, or wasted resources?

It’s not bad luck. It’s poor email deliverability.

Which is why we’re introducing the finest email deliverability checklist ever created. It contains every trick in the playbook to maximize deliverability, understand how to do an audit of your email-sending reputation, and make sure your cold emails land on top of anyone’s inbox… consistently!

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Email reputation audit

◻️ Check if your email has been backlisted.

◻️ Assess the quality of your IP.

◻️ Analyze your current stats to get better insight.

If your open rate is lower than 50% and reply rate is lower than 5%, you have one of the following issues:

◻️ Check if you’ve done the technical setup correctly.

◻️ Make sure you’re targeting the right audience! Here’s why it’s essential to build your buyer persona for proper B2B lead generation.

◻️Are you personalizing your cold emails? Get some inspiration from these cold email templates.

Technical configuration

Technical configuration behind your email deliverability is like the engine of your car. You won’t make it from A to B without it.

◻️ Set up your SPF

◻️ Set up your DKIM

◻️ How to set up your DMARC.

◻️ Set up your custom tracking domain.

◻️ Set up your exact profile (no fake names or photos).

Email domain warm-up

To avoid spam filters on a regular basis, you need to keep your email domain in good shape. This is where the email deliverability booster comes into play.

◻️ Manually warm up your emails (option 1):

Week 1: 10 to 20 emails per day
Week 2: 20 to 40 emails per day
Week 3: 40 to 80 emails per day
Week 4: 80 to 100 emails per day

◻️ Automatically warm up your email address (more desired option 2 ):

Use deliverability and warm-up booster like lemwarm to get your emails directly into the audience’s inbox.

Deliverability booster runs 100% on autopilot and helps you:

Avoid the spam folder with a tailored deliverability strategy
Improve sender reputation with human-like conversations
Maintain high deliverability with a detailed deliverability report

And to find out more on how to increase your business opportunities by creating lemwarm account, check out this article.

Email list quality and hygiene

Having invalid email addresses in your list comes at a high cost for your reputation and deliverability. Luckily, it’s easy to ensure this doesn’t happen to you.

◻️ Keep your bounce rate under 5%.

◻️ Don’t buy email lists where addresses are not verified.

◻️ Always send campaigns to business addresses of individuals.
The best source of B2B leads is LinkedIn as people tend to regularly update their job position and company. You can get important information about your leads through LinkedIn scraping.

◻️ Use a system that allows you to consistently get verified email addresses from fresh data sources.

Check out –> Target LinkedIn prospects, extract emails and send outbound campaigns automatically

◻️ If you have an existing list and are not sure about the data quality, use lemlist’s free email checker.

Send high-quality cold emails

Email providers are carefully assessing whether or not your prospects are engaging with the emails you send them. The only way to facilitate engagement and get replies is to focus these emails on your prospects and their needs.

In other words, make them unique and well-structured.

◻️ Don’t use complex HTML!

◻️ Don’t use fancy signatures – there’s no need.

Create a clean-looking and memorable signature with lemlist’s free email signature generator.

◻️ Don’t add any attachments to your emails. If you need to send a file, just use links (e.g. Google Drive).

◻️ Include images if you’d like – but not too many. Check out more information on how images affect deliverability.

◻️ Don’t use spam trigger words and phishing phrases (WIN, free, viagra etc…).

◻️ Don’t use ALL CAPS IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE.

◻️ Always personalize cold emails.

◻️ Use liquid syntax for ultra-personalization (e.g. when you want to automatically change intro lines for different audience verticals).

◻️ Use spin syntax if your lists are bigger than 300 people (e.g. where you have 4 different intro lines and they will spin in random order).

◻️ Always email A/B test in order to know what works best for you.

Maintain a good reputation

Avoiding spam filters comes down to ensuring your email reputation stays intact by following the guidelines email providers have provided you with.

◻️ Volume: Do not go over the limit of your email provider. Ideally, keep the number of emails sent between 50 and 200 per sender per day. If you need to deliver more emails, it’s best to use multiple senders.

◻️ Consistency: If you didn’t send any emails, but then all of a sudden you start blasting 500 emails every day, you’re gonna run into trouble. Try to establish a process with consistent daily volumes. When you need to increase it, go step by step.

◻️ Keeping a good ratio: From email sent to email received.

◻️ lemwarm = deliverability booster. Make sure to set up the email warm-up feature within lemlist. It will help you keep a higher ratio from email sent to email received.

◻️ Sending speed: Never send all emails at the same time – use a system allowing you to spread them throughout the day.

◻️ Monitor the following key metrics:

Open rate needs to be higher than 50%
Reply rate should be higher than 8%
Bounce rate needs to be lower than 5%
Unsubscribe rate needs to be lower than 5%

◻️ Always put an opt-out link!

Bottom line

Never make compromises with email deliverability.

You can have the best cold email template or the most awesome list in the world. You can write a fantastic subject line and have the clearest call to action. Heck, you can have the greatest product ever.

But if people don’t see your email, it will all be in vain.

To have the best email templates, fantastic subject line, and amazing email deliverability, give lemlist a try for free!