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Cold emailing is an amazing way to reach new clients and unlock precious opportunities. It’s like casting a huge net in an ocean full of leads. While most imagine crafting impactful cold emails is the key to cold emailing success, that’s only the latter half of the battle. The real task lies in the technical setup of your cold emails!
Without a strong technical foundation, even your most captivating emails won’t find their way to your audience’s inbox. Instead, they’ll be lost in spam folders and will never get opened or replied to, making your efforts in vain.
On the other hand, a solid technical setup sets the stage for success. It ensures that your emails reach recipients’ inboxes, protects the domain’s reputation, and boosts engagement and conversion chances!
In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the essential steps and strategies to take care of the technical side!
Your primary business domain is used to authenticate your emails. Never use your primary business email or domain for cold email setup.
Most people mark cold emails as spam. If they do so for the primary domain, it can destroy its reputation. As a result, your emails, even to coworkers and existing customers, may not get delivered.
So, it’s important to buy additional domains and new email addresses to send cold emails without disrupting significant business communications.
While buying domains for your cold email technical setup, consider creating variations of the primary domain.
For instance, if your primary domain is in xyzbusiness.com, consider buying a xyzbusiness.co or xyzbusiness.net domain. This helps the receiver recognize your brand while protecting your primary domain!
Before investing in any domain for technical setup for cold email, always check its reputation using tools such as Google Postmaster Tools. Further, check whether the domain is on blacklists, like Spamhaus.
TLDs are the last section of your domain name (eg. .com, .co, or .edu). There are several TLDs(Top Level Domains) with bad reputation. These can completely wreck your cold email technical setup efforts for good!
Email spam filters automatically put them in spam folders. Some servers even reject them. Here’s the list of the most abused TLDs you must avoid:
During your cold email technical setup, you must also consider TLDs that you and your team have a bad impression of.
Build multiple email addresses with your chosen domain name for the cold email technical setup.
If you send emails using all of them, there is a lower chance of having your emails being marked as spam. You can also use each of the emails for different campaigns or goals.
Further, you can only send up to 500 emails daily using Gmail. So, you need more emails to send any more than that.
One important part of the technical setup for cold email is diversification. This will prevent any work disruption if there are any technical or network issues. Here are the basic tips for diversification:
ESPs control the infrastructure used for sending cold emails. Look for these factors in an ESP.
The best ESPs for your cold email campaigns are Google Workspace (Gmail) and Microsoft 365 (Outlook).
The next step in your technical setup for cold email is to properly configure all email authentication protocols. This ensures that all emails are delivered to the receiver’s inbox and not their spam folders by guaranteeing credibility or authenticity.
MX redirects all emails to your mail servers and ensures all emails received on your domain are properly routed. You must set it up when using new domains in the following steps.
Source: Google Workspace
SPF is important for setting up email authentication and email deliverability. You can set it up for your Google Workspace following these.
DKIM is crucial for the technical setup for cold email. It adds your digital signature to every email to prevent email spoofing and enhance email deliverability and security.
DMARC protects the domain and emails from being used in malicious activities, such as spoofing and phishing attacks, and improves email security.
To add a DMARC record in your domain settings:
Note: Your domain provider might automatically append your domain name.
Follow a gradual email and domain warmup process for your cold email setup before sending the actual cold emails. This creates a positive reputation and prevents your email from being flagged by spam filters, promising successful campaigns. Here’s how to do it:
The first significant part of the technical setup for cold email is to send a handful of emails every day only to select responsive contacts and even coworkers.
Continue this for at least three months, and slowly increase the volume. This will prevent triggering spam filters.
This is another effective strategy during the technical setup for cold email. Every time you receive replies to the emails, respond swiftly. Steady engagement with recipients enhances the email address’ reputation. Email providers perceive your email as legitimate.
An interesting cold email technical setup move is to subscribe to 15 newsletters at least. After receiving their confirmation email, confirm all of them.
This can validate your email and domain even further. As you receive emails regularly, your email addresses warm up faster.
The next significant step of your technical setup for cold email is to consistently check the email and domain reputation. This helps identify whether your cold email will reach the receivers’ inbox. This can be done in different ways:
You can use any of the popular email domain reputation tracking tools, such as Google Postmaster, MXToolbox, Sender Score, and Microsoft SNDS.
They offer detailed insights about email providers’ perceptions of your domain. This lets you identify and address issues early on.
Your domain for cold email setup can end in the blacklist even after following best practices. So, regularly check email blacklists. Make sure your domains and IP addresses aren’t listed there.
If any of them is listed, know the cited reason on their website. Ensure there are no security or other issues, and then request them to remove it from the blacklist.
The best way to speed up the cold email technical setup is to remove email addresses that don’t get enough engagement. Poor engagement often impacts the email's reputation.
In your cold email technical setup, you need to learn the efficiency of your email campaigns by monitoring email opens and link clicks. However, if you use a generic/default tracking domain from email service providers, email providers perceive that as a red flag.
A custom tracking domain (CTD) ensures your emails look natural and protects email deliverability. Choose any CTD of your choice and set it up following these steps:
An essential part of cold email setup is the timing of sending emails and delays. This enhances engagement and helps avoid spam filters.
You can manually mimic the natural way of sending emails at varying intervals. Send some of your emails now and some later on.
However, you can also automate this activity. Some cold email technical setup tools automatically let you randomize email sending times.
For instance, you can pick a bunch of emails to be sent now, another bunch after 3 minutes, the next set after 7 minutes, and so on.
If you send too many emails daily, it can raise red flags, leading to deliverability problems. So, follow these strategies to maintain a good email reputation:
After the warm-up phase, you can now slowly yet steadily pick the pace in technical setup for cold email. Here are some strategies to do this effectively:
Another email-sending strategy in your cold email setup is to scale the effort on the content, following these ways.
The last thing to ensure your cold email setup works the best is to be mindful of hours and time zones from day 1!
Make sure you don’t manually or automatically send emails on the weekends or at night. Consider the recipient’s time zone and ensure your email reaches them during their business hours.
This boosts the chances of them opening your email. Higher open rates are the secret behind making your cold email setup successful!
The world of cold email outreach is growing more competitive with time. Amidst such competition, you must pay special attention to the technical details of cold email campaigns.
Remember, only when the technical side is set up and optimized correctly does your campaign become effective!
With seemingly small aspects, such as domain setup, authentication, and timing, you can make a huge difference!
So, navigate all the technical nitty-gritty with these detailed steps and make your outreach campaigns successful.
