Email remains a popular primary communication channel in business among both consumers and companies in 2024. For this reason, cold emails are still an essential part of sales. However, the process of sending cold emails has evolved significantly; expectations for email quality and relevance have risen. Therefore, optimizing the deliverability of cold emails is more important than ever. A successful cold email strategy today is based on personalization, creativity, and strategic thinking. This article will explain how to improve the deliverability of cold emails and avoid your emails ending up in the spam folder.

New Challenges for Deliverability

Email marketing faces significant new challenges in 2024. Predictive models and spam filters have advanced considerably, meaning that email marketers need to be more precise and inventive. Users expect more personalized and relevant messages, requiring a deep understanding of the target audience's needs and desires.

Strategies to Improve Deliverability

1. IP Warming

One of the most important ways to improve deliverability is “warming up” your IP address. This means gradually increasing the volume of emails sent over time. This helps create a more reliable and authentic sender profile, rather than suddenly flooding inboxes with emails. There are tools available to facilitate this process, such as Instantly.ai. It is advisable to “warm up” your IP address for at least two weeks before sending actual cold emails.

2. Maintaining a Clean Email List

Regularly cleaning your email list is essential for maintaining deliverability. There are also tools available for this process that help avoid your account being flagged as spam, which can be disastrous for deliverability.

3. Implementing Authentication Protocols

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are key complementary authentication protocols that ensure the legitimacy of the sender. Implementing these protocols differentiates your business from spammers and improves deliverability.

4. Limiting Cold Emails

It is important to maintain human-like sending behavior. The number of cold emails sent should be limited to a maximum of 20 per day per sending address. Sending too many emails from one address can lead to landing in the spam folder. It is also advisable to use multiple different domains for sending addresses and to use as few sending addresses as possible per domain. The domain is the part of the email address that follows the "@" symbol.

Enhancing Content to Improve Deliverability

To achieve good deliverability, it is also essential to focus on the content aspects of the emails, not just the technical aspects. Engaging content that resonates with the recipient is more likely to be opened and elicit a response, which enhances deliverability. Personalization is key here; the more personalized a cold email is, the better its deliverability.

Personalization

Personalization is a crucial part of cold email strategies. However, over-personalization is not advisable, so a balance should be struck between personalization and scalability. Authenticity and relevance are critical in a personalization strategy. Truly meaningful personalization increases the value of the email in the eyes of the recipient and is more likely to get a response. Genuine personalization should be based on the recipient’s recent news or even blog posts published by their company.

Using Spintax

Spintax is a convenient method that automatically substitutes words in emails, such as using different greetings. Tools like Instantly.ai help make this easy. With Spintax, you can send unique emails, which improves deliverability because each email you send appears different to spam filters. For example, the greeting can be changed to "{{ How are you | Hi | Hello }} [Name]," which creates several different versions of the same email by selecting one of the alternatives separated by a vertical bar within curly brackets.

Summary

In 2024, the landscape of email marketing has changed. Deliverability depends on a deep understanding of cold email campaigns, their technical and content-related aspects, and the authenticity of the messages. Creating messages that truly resonate with the recipient is crucial; otherwise, landing in the spam folder is likely. By following the strategies outlined in this article, you can ensure that your emails reach the right people and produce the desired results!