Deliverability Best Practices

Everything you can do to keep your emails landing in inboxes.

Deliverability is the ability to land in the inbox rather than the spam folder. Here is a complete checklist of best practices.

Domain and DNS setup

• Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your sending domain
• Use a subdomain for cold outreach (e.g. outreach.yourdomain.com) to protect your main domain's reputation
• Verify your records are correct using tools like MXToolbox

Inbox warm-up

• Start new inboxes at 20–30 emails/day and increase gradually over 4–6 weeks
• Send some genuine replies and conversations from new inboxes before starting campaigns
• Use a warm-up service (e.g. Mailwarm, Instantly warm-up) for faster warm-up

List hygiene

• Validate your email list before importing (use a tool like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce)
• Remove leads who have bounced
• Never purchase email lists — they are full of spam traps
• Only email people who are plausibly relevant to your offer

Copy and content

• Avoid spam trigger words (free, guaranteed, no obligation, etc.)
• Keep emails short — 3 to 5 sentences is ideal
• Do not use all-caps or excessive punctuation
• Include a clear unsubscribe option

Sending behaviour

• Spread volume across multiple inboxes rather than pushing one inbox hard
• Use global send delays (Settings) to put natural gaps between emails
• Send during business hours in the recipient's timezone

Note: Ignore deliverability at your peril. Once a domain or inbox gets a poor reputation, it is very difficult to recover. Prevention is far easier than repair.