Like most selling activities, outbound email is a blend of art and science. While my last article focused more on the “art” of your email message, this checklist focuses more on the “science” of making sure you have a solid foundation for your sales prospecting email.
If you can’t answer “Yes” to all of these questions, you should delay scaling your outbound email efforts until you have the appropriate foundational elements in place.
1. Have you separated your email sending domains by use case?
To safeguard your sender reputation and prioritize essential communications, you should use separate domains for Corporate, Product/Transactional, and outbound Sales/Commercial emails. By segmenting your email domains, you can monitor each domain’s health and ensure high-priority emails—like transactional messages for invoices or password resets—remain unaffected by the performance or reputation of your sales emails.
2. Have you implemented email authentication on all sending domains?
As of 2024, Google and Yahoo will automatically classify emails lacking valid SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication as spam. Even if your recipients aren’t using Google or Yahoo, most ISPs are evaluating these authentication protocols to determine your sender legitimacy. Ensuring your domains are authenticated can significantly reduce your chances of being flagged as spam, increasing the chances that your beautifully written email will be seen.
3. Are you staying below the sending volume threshold?
Consider this: how many emails can one human realistically send in a day? While the answer varies from person to person, the accepted limit for outbound sales emails is to send less than 50 per account per day. Higher volumes raise red flags for ISPs that you are sending bulk, less relevant email, increasing the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.
And if you’re sending multi-step email sequences, don’t forget the compounding impact of the volume of follow-on emails in the sequence. Don’t make the mistake of sending 50 new email #1s in a 5 step sequence, and wonder why you’re over the 50 email limit at the end of the week.
4. Have you set up multiple sending domains and accounts/inboxes for your reps?
If you need to send more than the 50-email-per-day limit, you will likely need multiple email accounts and sending domains for your outbound activities. This separation can create managerial hassles, but it helps distribute your email volume, helping protect your program from potential deliverability issues. For example:
- 3 reps x 1 email account each x 3 domains = 450 emails daily
- 3 reps x 3 email accounts each x 3 domains = 1,350 emails daily
(And BTW, if you are sending more than 50 emails a day, you’re probably not effectively customizing and personalizing the emails to achieve the higher engagement rates that you really want.)
5. Did you warm up your domain and inboxes before starting your campaigns?
Launching an outbound campaign without warming up your domains and inboxes is risky. A multi-week warm-up phase, where accounts send and receive low volumes of emails, signals legitimacy helping emails land in recipients’ inboxes rather than their spam folders. Domain and Inbox warming are not a cure-all for deliverability issues, but are an important first step to getting your program running.
6. Are you only using verified, targeted emails?
Only use emails sourced from reputable platforms like ZoomInfo, Apollo, or Seamless.ai, and ensure you have the legal right to contact those recipients for commercial purposes. Be sure that you comply with both the platform’s policies and your own privacy guidelines when contacting individuals that have not explicitly opted-in to email from you.
7. Are you validating all emails before sending?
It’s essential to validate each contact’s email using tools like NeverBounce, Zero Bounce, or EmailListVerify to remove inactive emails or spam traps. This additional step helps improve your email efficiency and helps avoid sending emails to invalid addresses, which can harm your sender reputation and waste resources.
8. Have you optimized your email content for deliverability and open rates?
Adopt a deliverability-first approach to maximize open rates on your first couple of emails to a recipient. Avoid elements like email open tracking, images, attachments, links, and spam-trigger words which ISPs closely monitor. You can start sending links, files and attachments once your recipients start to respond and you’re engaged in more of a dialogue with them.
Regularly test your domain health and inbox placement to ensure steady performance across your campaigns.
Also, vary your sending times and use spintax to subtly randomize the content of each email. It’s a clear signal to the ISPs if you send out all of your emails at the same time, with identical content. This shouldn’t be an issue since you’re personalizing each email to make it relevant to the recipient, but use your email platform to help you mimic real human behaviors.
10. Do you have a concise nurture strategy?
Studies show email engagement decreases after the first two messages in a nurture sequence.
Rather than overwhelming recipients with a lengthy 7-step email flow, consider pausing after two messages and re-engaging with them later when their situation may have changed.
Also given the declining effectiveness of email, be sure you’re thinking about a multi-channel approach involving LinkedIn messages, physical mail or phone calls to create engagement. Email is valuable and important, but it is not a silver bullet.
11. Are you constantly testing and refining your copy, cadence, and targeting?
Extensive testing your email content, timing, steps and targeting can help you increase your open and engagement rates over time. Constantly refine your approach to meet your audience’s preferences and maximize engagement.
