Cold emailing remains an essential business practice, but getting it right can be tricky. Sending cold emails without proper preparation can lead to reduced deliverability, which is the email's ability to land in your recipient's inbox without getting filtered out or flagged as spam. To ensure your cold emails achieve the desired results, here's a comprehensive checklist you can follow:

1) Verify Lead List

• Why is this important?

  When you fail to verify your lead list, you risk sending to invalid email addresses. This can cause your emails to bounce, adversely affecting your email deliverability. To give perspective, just a 2% bounce rate from unverified emails can severely harm your deliverability rate.

• Tools to Use:

  Consider employing tools like Millionverifier or Neverbounce to authenticate your lead list before embarking on your email campaign.

2) Use Spin-Tax

• What exactly is Spin-Tax?

  Spintax, short for spinning syntax, is a unique algorithm used by platforms like Instantly to generate various versions of a text. In the context of cold emailing, this means you can send myriad versions of your email, all conveying the same core message. By doing this, you avoid getting flagged by Email Service Providers (ESPs) as it can generate up to a whopping 1 million variations of your email!

• Learn More:

  To better grasp the concept and its applications, watch this video tutorial.

3) Refrain from Including Links or Videos in Your Initial Email

• The Reason? Integrating links or videos in your first touchpoint can wreak havoc on your deliverability. ESPs can view these links suspiciously, not knowing their source or intention, often classifying such emails as potentially harmful or spammy.

4) Avoid Profanity, Excessive Caps, or Trigger Words

• What to watch out for: Steer clear of profanity, overusing capital letters, or spam-triggering words like "free" or "promotion" in your email content. ESP algorithms are designed to detect and flag such emails as spam. To enhance your email copy, find alternative expressions that convey your message without these potential pitfalls.

5) Always Keep Warm-Up Activated When Sending

• Why this matters:

  Deactivating the warm-up feature when sending cold emails is a recipe for diminishing your deliverability. Imagine getting a surge of replies during the warm-up phase and then seeing a drastic dip to just 1-2% reply rates for your regular cold email campaigns. ESPs will pick this up, and it's a glaring red flag.

• Best Practice:

  Always keep the warm-up feature active. If you're sending out 25 cold emails, balance it by sending another 25 warm-up emails to ensure consistency in replies and maintain healthy deliverability.

In conclusion, while cold emailing can be a potent tool for outreach and business development, its effectiveness lies in the details. By following this checklist, you can ensure that your emails not only reach their intended recipients but also engage them effectively.