Summary
Cold email senders face significant deliverability issues due to a complex interplay of factors. They often resist advice, clinging to the belief that their business model depends on unsolicited emails. A core problem lies in their disregard for permission-based marketing, which damages sender reputation and results in low engagement, spam complaints, and blacklisting. The use of purchased, scraped, or outdated email lists leads to high bounce rates and further harms reputation. Technical missteps, such as neglecting IP warm-up, inconsistent sending schedules, and poor email design, exacerbate the problems. Shared IP addresses can also contribute to deliverability issues if other users engage in spammy practices. Finally, cold emailers frequently seek quick fixes like DMARC instead of addressing the underlying issues of list quality and sender reputation.
Key findings
- Resistance to Change: Cold email senders often resist advice and are unwilling to adopt more ethical and effective strategies.
- Dependence on Unsolicited Emails: They believe their business model depends on sending unsolicited emails, making them hesitant to transition to permission-based marketing.
- Lack of Genuine Relationships: Cold email senders lack genuine relationships with recipients, making it difficult to build trust and engagement.
- Poor List Quality: Purchasing, scraping, or using outdated email lists leads to high bounce rates and spam complaints.
- Negative Sender Reputation: Sending unsolicited emails damages sender reputation, resulting in deliverability issues.
- Technical Missteps: Failing to warm up IP addresses, inconsistent sending schedules, and poor email design trigger spam filters.
- Shared IP Risks: Using shared IP addresses can lead to deliverability problems if other users engage in spammy practices.
- Seeking Quick Fixes: Cold emailers often seek quick fixes like DMARC instead of addressing underlying issues.
Key considerations
- Address Mindset: Acknowledge the sender's attachment to their existing practices and address their mindset regarding unsolicited emails.
- Educate on Best Practices: Educate senders on the importance of permission-based marketing and ethical email practices.
- Improve List Hygiene: Emphasize the importance of building and maintaining high-quality, permission-based email lists.
- Monitor Sender Reputation: Advise senders to monitor their sender reputation using tools like Google Postmaster Tools and Validity's ReturnPath.
- Implement Technical Best Practices: Encourage senders to warm up IP addresses, establish consistent sending schedules, and improve email design.
- Use Dedicated IPs: Recommend using dedicated IP addresses to avoid deliverability issues caused by shared IP addresses.
- Focus on Long-Term Strategy: Guide senders toward a long-term strategy that prioritizes building relationships and providing value to recipients.
- Transition Away from Cold Email: Encourage the transition to inbound practices and other non-cold email outreach approaches.
What email marketers say
9 marketer opinions
Cold email senders face significant deliverability challenges due to a combination of factors. They often lack genuine relationships with recipients and disregard permission-based marketing, leading to low engagement and damaged sender reputation. Using outdated or inaccurate email lists results in high bounce rates and spam complaints. Sharing IP addresses with spammers can negatively impact deliverability. The absence of personalization and poor email design further contribute to spam filtering. Failing to warm up IP addresses before sending large volumes and inconsistent sending habits also exacerbate the problem.
Key opinions
- Lack of Relationship: Cold email senders typically do not have an established relationship with recipients, leading to distrust and lower engagement.
- Permission Issues: Sending emails without prior consent damages sender reputation and increases the likelihood of spam complaints.
- Poor List Quality: Using outdated, inaccurate, or purchased email lists results in high bounce rates and spam complaints.
- Shared IP Risks: Shared IP addresses can suffer deliverability issues if other users engage in spammy behavior.
- Lack of Personalization: Generic, mass emails are more likely to be flagged as spam due to the absence of personalization.
- IP Warm-up Neglect: Failing to warm up IP addresses before sending large volumes triggers spam filters.
- Inconsistent Sending: Irregular sending habits damage sender reputation and contribute to spam filtering.
- Poor Email Design: Poorly designed emails with broken links or excessive images increase the chance of being marked as spam.
Key considerations
- Build Relationships: Focus on building genuine relationships with potential recipients before sending emails.
- Obtain Consent: Always obtain explicit consent before sending emails to improve engagement and maintain a good sender reputation.
- Maintain List Hygiene: Regularly clean and update email lists to remove invalid or inactive addresses.
- Monitor IP Reputation: Monitor and protect IP reputation by adhering to best practices and avoiding spammy behavior.
- Personalize Emails: Personalize email content to increase engagement and reduce the likelihood of being marked as spam.
- Warm-Up IP Addresses: Gradually increase sending volume over time to warm up IP addresses and establish a good sending reputation.
- Maintain Consistent Sending: Establish a regular sending schedule to build a consistent sender reputation.
- Improve Email Design: Ensure email designs are clean, functional, and free of broken links or excessive images to avoid triggering spam filters.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that sending emails to people who haven't given you permission can damage your sender reputation and deliverability. Mailchimp emphasizes that respecting recipients' preferences is crucial for successful email marketing.
19 Nov 2022 - Mailchimp
Marketer view
Email marketer from GMass shares that lack of personalization makes it difficult to engage recipients and avoid being marked as spam. Generic, mass emails are more likely to be flagged by spam filters.
7 Jan 2023 - GMass
What the experts say
5 expert opinions
Cold email senders are difficult to help with deliverability issues because they are often resistant to advice, believe their business model depends on unsolicited emails, and are offended when told their mail is unwanted. They often seek a cheap fix, like DMARC alone, and use purchased or scraped lists which lead to high complaint rates. They also often feel stopping cold email will shut down their business.
Key opinions
- Resistance to Advice: Cold email senders often resist advice and best practices due to attachment to their existing strategies.
- Dependence on Unsolicited Emails: They believe their business relies on sending unsolicited emails, making them unwilling to adopt ethical alternatives.
- Offended by Feedback: Cold emailers are often offended when told their emails are unwanted, indicating a lack of understanding of consent.
- Seeking Quick Fixes: They look for simple solutions like DMARC to solve complex deliverability problems.
- Poor List Quality: They use purchased, scraped, or harvested email lists, resulting in high complaint rates and deliverability issues.
- Business Model Dependence: Believe stopping the existing strategy would shut down their business.
Key considerations
- Address Mindset: Acknowledge and address the sender's attachment to their existing practices before offering alternative strategies.
- Educate on Consent: Educate senders on the importance of consent and the negative impact of sending unwanted emails.
- Provide Comprehensive Solutions: Offer comprehensive deliverability solutions instead of relying on quick fixes.
- Emphasize List Quality: Stress the importance of building and maintaining high-quality email lists.
- Demonstrate Value of Ethical Practices: Showcase how ethical email marketing practices can lead to long-term success.
- Highlight benefits of transitioning away from cold email: Outline the benefits of transitioning to more ethical email practices such as lead magnet, or more inbound based processes.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks shares that cold email senders often believe that being told to stop sending emails would shut down their whole business. He also states that he just wants no part of it.
6 Jun 2022 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource explains that lists used by cold emailers will lead to deliverability problems because of purchased data, scraped data and harvested email addresses. All of these will generate a high number of complaints which results in deliverability issues.
1 Nov 2021 - Spam Resource
What the documentation says
5 technical articles
Cold email senders face deliverability challenges primarily due to poor sender reputation arising from sending unwanted emails. This leads to filtering as spam, being blacklisted, and overall negative impacts on engagement metrics like bounce rates and spam complaints. Adhering to sender guidelines, implementing email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and focusing on list segmentation and permission-based marketing are crucial to mitigating these issues.
Key findings
- Negative Sender Reputation: Sending unsolicited emails negatively affects sender reputation, leading to deliverability issues.
- Gmail Filtering: Gmail filters messages from senders with poor reputations as spam, adhering to Google's Postmaster Tools guidelines.
- Blacklisting: Sending unsolicited emails can result in being listed on blocklists such as Spamhaus, severely impacting deliverability.
- Impact on Engagement: Poor sender reputation affects engagement metrics like spam complaints, bounce rates, and overall engagement, further damaging deliverability.
- Authentication Importance: Email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are crucial for verifying sender identity and improving email delivery rates.
Key considerations
- Obtain Consent: Adhere to sender guidelines by obtaining explicit consent before sending emails.
- Implement Authentication: Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify sender identity and improve deliverability.
- Practice List Segmentation: Implement list segmentation to ensure relevant content is sent to appropriate audiences.
- Embrace Permission-Based Marketing: Shift to permission-based marketing strategies to maintain a good sender reputation.
- Monitor Sender Reputation: Regularly monitor sender reputation using tools like Google Postmaster Tools and Validity's ReturnPath.
- Avoid Spam Triggers: Avoid practices that trigger spam filters, such as sending high volumes of unsolicited emails and using deceptive subject lines.
Technical article
Documentation from Microsoft explains that a poor sender reputation due to sending unsolicited emails can result in messages being filtered as spam. They advise senders to implement best practices like list segmentation and permission-based marketing to maintain a good reputation.
16 Feb 2022 - Microsoft
Technical article
Documentation from RFC explains using authentication such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to help verify the sender's identity and improve email delivery rates by preventing spoofing and phishing.
30 Sep 2023 - RFC-Editor
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