Email Deliverability (Best Practices)

title: Email Deliverability (Best Practices)
description: >-
Follow these best practices to keep your emails landing in inboxes instead of
spam.

Overview

Email deliverability is your ability to land emails in the recipient's inbox instead of spam. It depends on your domain authentication, sender reputation, email content, and sending behavior. This guide is a high-level checklist that links to detailed setup articles — complete the pre-flight items once before your first campaign, then follow the ongoing practices to maintain a strong sender reputation over time.

Pre-Flight Checklist

Complete these one-time tasks before sending your first campaign:

• Avoid using a subdomain. Using a subdomain is not ideal at all, and your email availability would really be bad if you use it.

• Always use a burner domain so that your main domain and mail business domain address is not harmed.

-Authenticate your domain
Add SPF, DKIM, and DMARC TXT records to your DNS so email providers can verify your identity and bypass spam filters.

-Run a Domain Setup Check
Go to Outreach → Email Senders → Actions → Domain Report. Review the report for SPF, DMARC, DKIM, and custom tracking domain status. Fix any failed checks.

-Warm up your senders
Enable WarmUp for 15–30 days before sending cold emails. This automatically sends emails, opens them, clicks links, and moves them from spam to inbox. We have 100,000+ Active email addresses in our warmup pool network. Not available for SMTP-only accounts.

-Set up a custom tracking domain
Replace default tracking URLs with your branded domain to improve trust and avoid spam flags. Use a subdomain if you have a live website on your root domain.

-Verify your lead lists
Clean lists before sending to protect your sender reputation and reduce bounces.

-Create a professional signature
Keep it simple, assign it to your sender, and use {{email_signature_of_sender}} in templates.

Ongoing Best Practices

Follow these habits to maintain and improve deliverability over time:

• Send plain text emails — Avoid heavy HTML and images in initial emails. Select Plain Text format in templates for better inbox placement.

• Use AI Spintax — Enable spintax in sequences to create multiple copy variations and avoid sending identical emails repeatedly. Add variations to subject lines, greetings, and CTAs:

  {{ Hey {first_name} | Hi {first_name} }},
  {{ I came across {company_name} | I was checking out {company_name} }}...
  {{ Mind if I send over a quick loom? | Worth a 3-minute video? }}

• Disable open and click tracking — In Sequence Settings, turn off open tracking and avoid default click tracking to reduce spam signals. If links are needed, use a custom tracking domain.

-Enable Random Delays and Sending Hours
Add 2–7 minute random delays and restrict sending to business hours to mimic human behavior. Even when disabled, SalesBlink adds a 30–60 second delay automatically.

• Follow daily sending limits — Start at 10–20 emails/day for new senders, ramp to 20–30 after the first 1–2 weeks, and stay at 30–50 emails/day per sender once established. This applies regardless of your email provider (Google Workspace, Outlook, etc.). Set limits in Email Senders → Sender Settings → Daily Sending Limit.

• Avoid images and links in the first email — If follow-up emails need links, use a custom tracking domain instead of default tracking URLs.

• Refresh templates regularly — Update copy weekly or bi-weekly to prevent repetition-based spam detection and keep content relevant.

• Run multiple sequences — Diversify sending patterns instead of relying on a single sequence to maintain natural behavior.

• Monitor sender health — In Outreach → Email Senders, click the Health icon to review your deliverability score and recommendations.
• 90+ — Excellent
• 70–89 — Good
• Below 70 — Review SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and warm-up status

• Use multiple senders and folders — Connect unlimited senders and organize them into folders to rotate sending and increase daily capacity. Start with at least 4 Google Workspace Gmail and 4 Outlook mailboxes so provider matching can route each lead through the same provider ecosystem. Order Done-For-You Gmail or Done-For-You Outlook mailboxes from SalesBlink if you want a fully managed setup.

• Filter WarmUp emails — All WarmUp emails contain "hotblink" in the subject. Create a filter in your email client to hide them from your inbox.

Troubleshooting

Note: New email accounts typically need 2–4 weeks of warm-up before high-volume sending.

Results

Following these practices helps:

• Improve inbox placement
• Reduce spam flags
• Increase engagement and conversions
• Build long-term sender reputation
• Maximize the ROI of your cold email campaigns

For detailed setup guides, refer to the linked articles throughout this checklist.

Updated on: 03/07/2026