With the recent tightening of Google’s anti-spam policies, it’s very important to prepare thoroughly for cold outreach to avoid spam. We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide to help you get your domains and emails ready for outreach, as well as setting up sequences.
1. Buy domains
For cold email outreach, it’s better to register a secondary domain or even several. Even if you follow all the rules, sooner or later the domain may end up on some spam list, leading to issues with email for all users of that domain. Therefore, it’s advised to create a new domain specifically for cold outreach. The domain should be old, ideally several months old.
It can be similar to your main one. Example: closelyhq.com > infocloselyhq.com
Buy domains: godaddy.com
2. Technical setup
Any domain needs to be configured before sending emails, specifically: MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup. These terms refer to various email authentication methods that verify to email service providers that your messages are coming from a legitimate source.
You need an admin who specializes in this, as mistakes are often made when setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Tools: easydmarc.com, mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx
3. Create Inboxes
The email accounts should also be old, at least one month or more. If you’re creating bots, it’s better to set them up in the name of your actual employees who have LinkedIn profiles, as clients may check this. After that, you can forward the contact to the person who will actually be making calls and communicating. Several such emails are created, and the emails alternate between them, especially when one of the emails ends up on the spam list.
4. Fill out Gmail information
Make sure to fill as many fields as possible (Full Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Contact Information, Phone number).
5. Set up 2-factor authentication
This could be an additional sign that you are not a bot.
6. Warm up inboxes
Before starting outreach, you need to warm up inboxes. It means you should send emails to some email inboxes who will interact with your emails, mark them as important, unmark them as spam, etc. to build pozitive reputation.
There are special tools for this like warmupinbox.com, mailtoaster.ai
7. Check your email deliverability
You need to check your emails deliverability. There are special tools for this, they check your inbox placement: where your email lands on Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Outlook mailboxes.
Tools: mail-tester.com, glockapps.com
Sooner or later, the inbox will end up on one of the several dozen spam databases. In this case, it’s better to pause the outreach and do the warm-up.
8. Connect your inboxes to Closely
It’s a straightforward process that won’t take much time. Find explanatory videos in your account.
9. Configure inbox settings
There are several settings that are important to configure before starting outreach.
Number of emails sent per day
From one warmed-up account, you can send 50-100 emails per day. You should start gradually as well: first 5-10 emails per day in the first week, then 10-20 in the second week, and 20-30 in the third week, and so on. This is especially important for new email accounts, with an increase of +10 emails each week.
Sending time
It’s important to set the timing for sending messages so that they arrive during business hours. If this isn’t done, potential clients may miss the messages, which affects the open rate. Low open and reply rates are also red flags for spam filters.
Timezone
If your potential buyers are in a different timezone, make sure to configure it so the messages are sent at the right time.
Days
For the same reason, specify the days on which the emails should be sent.
Signature
The signature should not contain images or links. Example:
First Name, Last Name
Position at Company name
10. Campaign settings
Previously, deliverability could be tracked using an open rate metric. However, after the tightening of Google’s anti-spam policy, it’s no longer advisable to track Open rate. Instead, you can focus on optimizing the content of emails and settings as much as possible, while tracking deliverability through Bounced, Replied metrics and various services that help determine whether your emails are landing in spam.
Deliverability mainly depends on the quality of the collected database and the settings of the domain/email. The content of the email also has an impact. Most importantly, do not include links or images in the text of the first email. Additionally, be cautious with the text itself and avoid trigger words like: free, discount, cheap, offer, urgent, etc. It’s also best to avoid using ALL CAPS and attachments.
- You shouldn’t send a large number of emails all at once. The distribution should happen gradually throughout the day. Just imagine sending all these cold emails manually. It would take time to compose each one, modify the content, check for errors, format everything, and so on.
In reality, composing and sending a single email manually would take a few minutes.
Closely won’t send emails at once, the emails will be sent one by one, the time period will be set randomly.
- You can’t send the same text to a large number of recipients. To avoid this, use variables to unify each email.
- Delays between messages to one recipient. Once your campaign is set, make sure to configure delays between messages to one recipient. You shouldn’t send emails to someone every day; take a break of a few days before sending a follow-up to a potential buyer.
- Turn off open rate tracking and link clicks tracking. This is an important measure, as following the recent changes in Google’s anti-spam policy, it’s undesirable to enable open rate tracking.
Although you won’t track this metric directly, you can optimize your campaigns to increase open rates. The Open rate is primarily influenced by the subject line and, to a lesser extent, by the first few lines of the email that are visible in many email providers. Make sure to create engaging subject lines.
- Bounced. Keep an eye on bounce rate. A high bounce rate signals that your emails are likely going to spam. A normal bounce rate is less than 2%.
- Replied. If your emails are going to spam, your Replied metric will be low as well.
11. Check whether your domain/IP/inbox has been added to spam lists and spam complaints
Periodically check whether your domain/IP/inbox has been added to spam lists: dnschecker.org/ip-blacklist-checker.php
Check spam complaints: gmail.com/postmaster/ (for google accounts). High means more than 0.3%. This year, these requirements have become much stricter, so it’s recommended not to exceed a 0.1% spam complaint rate. This makes long, annoying email sequences of 7-10 messages nearly impossible.
12. Databases
The quality of your databases is more important than the quantity of potential buyers in them. Try not to purchase ready-made databases, but instead collect them manually.
The best tool to use is LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which will allow you to segment your audience and obtain a list of the right people. It has a large database of B2B contacts and many filters.
Once you finish filtering, copy the URL of the search results. You can add this link when uploading your audience for your outreach campaigns. When launching a multichannel campaign in Closely, add the step “Find emails,” and Closely will extract the emails of those users. You will be able to reach out to them on both LinkedIn and via email within the same campaign.
Closely will extract the emails of these users from LinkedIn and add them to the campaign.
If you want to run only an email outreach campaign, download the extension for LinkedIn. Make audience search. Once your list is ready, you can click “Export with emails” and the list will be downloaded as CSV file. Later, you can upload this file when adding your audience to your email campaign.
This extension can also open individual emails of people from their LinkedIn profiles.
For finding companies/contacts you can also use: ChatGPT, search engines, Google Maps, review sites, job boards, and other email finders.
- Base validation
Email validation typically consists of validating an email address’s format and existence, checking the domain’s validity, ensuring the mailbox can receive messages, and detecting disposable or risky addresses. You can use special services for this.
13. Add LinkedIn to your outreach to reach goals, and even better, use multichannel outreach
With all the tightening from Google, incorporating LinkedIn outreach is advisable, as it can help you attract customers just as effectively as email. Even better, launch multichannel campaigns. Such campaigns allow you to personalize your emails, as you can mention that you’ve already reached out to the potential client on LinkedIn, which improves personalization and positively impacts reply rates.
