Cold Email Deliverability: 17 Actions to Always Land in the Inbox

Sending cold emails that land in spam is a silent revenue killer. In this session, Damien Brenelière, CEO of MailReach, breaks down 17 actionable steps drawn from millions of cold emails sent and real deliverability data. You will learn how to configure your sending infrastructure correctly, build and protect your sender reputation, source and verify high-quality contact lists, and craft email content that passes spam filters. By the end, you will have a clear, prioritised checklist to audit and improve your cold email deliverability immediately.

Learning objectives

• Set up secondary sending domains, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records correctly to protect sender reputation
• Apply email warming strategies to build and maintain positive sender reputation over time
• Control daily sending volume and distribute sends across domains, days, and times to reduce spam risk
• Source prospect emails from LinkedIn and verify lists to manage bounce rates and catch-all proportions
• Identify and eliminate content elements—links, images, attachments, and trigger words—that cause spam filtering
• Use inbox placement tests to diagnose deliverability issues before and during live campaigns

Key takeaways

• Always send cold emails from secondary domains using Google Workspace or Office 365 mailboxes, never a custom SMTP server
• Spread sending across multiple domains to limit risk; a domain costs around $15 and is worth the investment
• Set up a custom tracking domain in your sending tool to avoid sharing a tracking domain with other users
• Cap sending at 100 cold emails per day per address to avoid reputation damage
• Keep catch-all emails to no more than 20% of any campaign list to control bounce rates
• Limit follow-ups to two, spaced at least three days apart—more follow-ups increase spam complaints without improving results
• Remove links, images, and attachments wherever possible, as these are leading causes of content-related spam
• Always include a clearly visible, working unsubscribe link; omitting it will rapidly increase spam complaint rates