Summary
The world of cold outreach email deliverability is often perceived differently by sales teams, marketing departments, and email deliverability experts. While some cold email campaigns are legal, many of the so-called best practices advocated for by certain cold outreach platforms closely resemble tactics historically associated with spamming. These methods, designed to bypass filters and maximize short-term reach, often disregard the long-term health of a sender's reputation and compliance with anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act.
Key findings
- Divergent definitions: The term deliverability holds different meanings across sales, marketing, and technical email communities, leading to varied approaches to cold outreach.
- Aggressive tactics: Some cold outreach strategies include using multiple burner domains and inboxes, automated content rotation, and omitting standard unsubscribe links in favor of reply to opt out requests.
- Compliance misinterpretations: There is a misunderstanding among some cold outreach practitioners that reply to opt out fully satisfies CAN-SPAM requirements, despite issues with central opt-out management and postal address inclusion.
- Reputation risk: These aggressive strategies can severely damage a sender's domain reputation, leading to blocklisting (or blacklisting) and long-term deliverability issues.
Key considerations
- Legal compliance: Always ensure cold outreach fully complies with relevant regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US and GDPR in Europe, including clear opt-out mechanisms and sender identification.
- Long-term deliverability: Prioritize building a sustainable sender reputation over short-term gains. Tactics like domain rotation and hiding unsubscribe options are unsustainable and harm overall email deliverability.
- Recipient experience: Consider how recipients perceive unsolicited emails. Aggressive tactics can lead to negative brand perception, increased spam complaints, and diminished trust.
- Strategic shift: Shift focus from purely volume-based outreach to highly targeted, personalized communication that respects recipient privacy and preferences. This leads to better engagement and long-term results.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face conflicting pressures regarding cold outreach. While they understand the importance of inbox placement and brand reputation, there's a perceived demand from sales leadership for aggressive, volume-based strategies. This can create a challenging environment where short-term lead generation metrics are prioritized over sustainable, compliant email practices.
Key opinions
- Pressure to perform: Marketing leaders may feel pressured to adopt aggressive cold outreach strategies to meet sales targets, even if these practices are known to be problematic for deliverability.
- Misaligned incentives: The focus on immediate customer acquisition can overshadow the long-term costs associated with poor sender reputation and legal non-compliance, such as getting added to a blocklist.
- ROI question: There is skepticism about the long-term positive ROI of such aggressive techniques, especially when considering the costs of constantly replacing burned domains and the low quality of acquired leads.
- Erosion of trust: Marketers recognize that excessive or unwanted cold emails can turn recipients off the email channel entirely, making it harder for legitimate senders to reach their audience.
Key considerations
- Educating leadership: It is crucial for marketers to educate sales and executive leadership on the true implications of aggressive cold outreach, emphasizing long-term deliverability and brand reputation.
- Ethical frameworks: Develop internal policies that align email outreach with ethical marketing principles and compliance requirements, rather than solely focusing on short-term sales metrics. This is key to achieving the best cold email deliverability.
- Sustainable strategies: Advocate for sustainable cold email strategies that prioritize list quality, personalization, and explicit consent where required, instead of techniques that burn through resources and domains.
- Measuring true ROI: Implement metrics that account for the hidden costs of aggressive cold outreach, such as brand damage, wasted resources, and the reduced effectiveness of future email campaigns.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests the term deliverability means very different things to different communities. This leads to confusion and conflicting advice between compliance, marketing, and sales teams regarding email outreach practices.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks indicates that marketing leaders are often perceived as underperforming if they do not adopt aggressive cold outreach strategies. This highlights a significant internal pressure to engage in potentially harmful email practices to meet perceived sales demands.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts (otherwise known as Email Geeks) hold a strong stance against the aggressive cold outreach best practices promoted by some sales-focused platforms. They view tactics like rotating domains, omitting unsubscribe links, and using AI for content variation as clear spammer behavior. Experts consistently emphasize the long-term damage these tactics inflict on sender reputation and the email ecosystem as a whole, contrasting them with sustainable, compliant strategies.
Key opinions
- Spam tactics: Experts universally classify strategies such as domain rotation, lack of unsubscribe links, and content obfuscation (e.g., via AI) as classic spammer tactics, not legitimate cold outreach.
- Reputation damage: These methods inevitably lead to a wrecked domain reputation, forcing senders into a constant arms race of burning through new resources.
- ISP sophistication: Gmail and Microsoft are continually improving their ability to identify unwanted mail, making aggressive cold outreach strategies increasingly difficult and less effective over time. This is outlined further in our guide on why emails go to spam.
- Compliance gaps: Even if reply to opt out is technically compliant in narrow US legal interpretations, the failure to maintain a central opt-out database and include a postal address means many cold outreach campaigns are still in violation.
Key considerations
- Sustainability over short-term: Prioritize building long-term, positive sender reputation through legitimate means, rather than engaging in an unsustainable cycle of burning and replacing sending infrastructure. This is critical to overcoming common deliverability challenges.
- Understanding ISP policies: Stay informed about the evolving spam detection capabilities of major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Gmail and Microsoft. What worked yesterday may lead to blocklisting today.
- Responsible reporting: Experts are actively identifying and reporting patterns of aggressive cold outreach tools to anti-spam organizations like Spamhaus, contributing to the ongoing fight against unsolicited email.
- Ethical practice: Adhere to the spirit of anti-spam laws, not just the letter. This includes honoring unsubscribe requests promptly and comprehensively across all sending entities within an organization.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks warns that engaging in tactics like rotating domains and omitting unsubscribe links is inherently encouraging recipients who are sufficiently irritated to take severe actions, such as reporting to blocklists or implementing stricter mail filters.
Expert view
Expert from Spamresource.com states that the goal of email marketing is to get mail delivered, not to send as much as possible. They emphasize that quality over quantity leads to better long-term results and avoids reputation damage associated with aggressive sending tactics.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and legal frameworks provide clear guidelines on commercial email, often contrasting sharply with the best practices espoused by some cold outreach vendors. The CAN-SPAM Act in the United States and GDPR in Europe establish specific requirements for commercial messages, particularly regarding opt-out mechanisms, sender identification, and consent.
Key findings
- Unsubscribe requirements: CAN-SPAM mandates that commercial emails must include a clear, conspicuous, and functional unsubscribe mechanism. While a reply-to-opt-out may seem to fit, it often falls short in practice due to issues with processing and centralized management.
- Sender identification: The law requires commercial emails to include a valid physical postal address of the sender. Many aggressive cold outreach campaigns fail to include this, making them non-compliant.
- Opt-out processing: Requests to opt-out must be honored within 10 business days, and the sender cannot sell or transfer the email addresses of those who have opted out. The use of multiple burner domains often makes comprehensive opt-out management impossible.
- Third-party responsibility: Even if a third party handles cold email outreach, the business whose products or services are being advertised is still legally responsible for compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act and other relevant regulations.
Key considerations
- Understand the law: Thoroughly review and understand the requirements of anti-spam legislation applicable to your target audience. For US senders, this includes the CAN-SPAM Act.
- Beyond the letter: Compliance means more than superficial adherence to the law. Implement systems that ensure all opt-out requests are centrally managed and honored across all sending domains and personnel within your organization.
- Avoid legal risks: Non-compliance can lead to significant fines, legal action, and irreparable damage to your brand and email sending reputation. This is one of the dangers of ignoring CAN-SPAM.
- Proactive measures: Regularly audit your cold outreach practices against current regulations and industry best practices. Ensure that all email messages clearly identify the sender, include a valid physical address, and provide an easy, reliable way for recipients to opt out.
Technical article
Documentation from the FTC's CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide states that commercial email messages must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. It specifies that this opt-out mechanism must be functional for at least 30 days after the email is sent.
Technical article
Documentation from FTC.gov further clarifies that commercial email messages must include your valid physical postal address. This requirement helps recipients identify the sender and provides an additional means for communication or legal recourse.
Related resources
15 resources
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