All your emails – no matter how well-drafted and creative they are – are useless if they are flagged by spam filters. That makes an email spam checker crucial.

Cold email messages are indeed an excellent way to get the conversation started with your prospects. But it’s only good if they end up in the prospect’s mailbox.

One out of five emails never makes it to the inbox. After all, if every unsolicited and virus-infected email made it through, the channel itself would become useless. This is why email deliverability is so crucial for cold email outreach.

In this article, we’ll outline the importance of email deliverability and sender reputation, along with how you can use an email spam checker to improve email deliverability.

What Is Email Deliverability?

If you don’t think your message will be delivered just because you have a valid email address and hit the send button, we have (bad) news for you.

When you send an email, it will be filtered. It can be delivered to the inbox, the categories tab, or the dreaded spam folder. Sometimes, your email may be blocked completely. So spam filters are inevitably part of the whole process, which is why you should prioritize deliverability.

Email deliverability refers to your ability to place an email in anybody’s inbox. Marketers use this to predict the likelihood of their emails reaching the subscribers’ inboxes related to real-time delivery.

How Are Your Emails Filtered or Flagged for Spam?

Mail servers like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo, as well as internet service providers (ISPs), have a checklist before they grant access to any email to somebody’s inbox. This checklist includes the following:

  • Sender reputation: This includes unnaturally high volumes, abuse reports, spam traps, and blacklists.

  • Email content quality: This evaluates whether it’s too promotional or spammy, contains profanity, long links, too many images in the email, and so on.

Luckily, just like there are rules that help you create effective cold emails, there are protocols too that can ensure your emails reach their destination.

Understanding Sender Reputation and Its Importance

We’re going to mention sender reputation a lot in the article, so let’s back up and explain what it means.

Putting it simply, email sender reputation indicates the trustworthiness of your email. It’s a score assigned by ISPs that directly influences your email deliverability. The higher your score, the more likely an ISP is to filter your emails to their network’s inbox.

Sender reputation matters for successful cold email outreach, and several factors influence it. We’ve compiled a list of a few of them below:

  • The number of emails you send

  • How often does your email hit the spam traps of ISPs

  • Your addition to any blacklists

  • Whether or not your recipients complain about your messages to the ISP

  • Your bounce rate

  • How recipients respond to your emails – whether they open it, reply, forward, delete, or mark as spam

  • The number of recipients who unsubscribe from your email list

Whatever your business goals are with gaining clients through cold email – increasing revenue, getting more traffic, or improving customer relations — the only way you can achieve them is to get your email delivered to the email inbox. After your subscribers open and read them, they’re more likely to take action.

What Does an Email Spam Checker Do?

The logic is simple: Higher Spam Score = Bad Email Deliverability = Negative Sender Reputation

Spammy email content, blacklisted IP address or email domains, too many links, and so on are common reasons why your emails might be marked as spam. You can use an email spam checker to avoid the consequences of getting flagged.

Email spam checker analyzes your emails by running them through spam filters to detect potential issues that can hinder your deliverability. Here are the benefits of using an email spam checker:

Improved Email Deliverability

The spam checker can highlight any loopholes in your email strategy, which can range from poor email content to unsatisfying email authentication. Eliminating these weak spots, in turn, can help you secure a spot in the recipient’s inbox.

Better Sender Reputation

Sender reputation includes many intricacies, such as sender score, email domain, authentication, and blacklists, along with template design and CTAs. Spam checkers provide the necessary information to improve your delivery stats that, in turn, will improve your sender and IP reputation.

Higher Quality of Emails

The whole point of sending emails is to make sure the recipients read them. That’s why you must do everything possible to ensure your emails don’t go to spam. An email spam checker detects anything inappropriate with your copy, thereby enhancing your email marketing efforts.

How To Avoid the Spam Folder

Now that we’ve covered the basics, that’s talk about ways in which you can maximize your email deliverability.

Work on Your Domain Name System (DNS) Records

DNS is the infrastructure of the internet and has several components. Mail servers can block your emails or mark them as spam if even one of these components is missing or wrong:

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF): This helps verify your identity.

  • Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): This must be set up to skip going to spam, especially considering the recent algorithm changes of Google and Microsoft.

  • DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): As the name suggests, these are keys to unlock messages. They help authenticate messages.

Use Deliverability and Sending Reputation Testing Tools

Email deliverability and sender reputation go hand-in-hand, which is why we recommend using advanced testing tools to determine your sender and deliverability score.

Use a spamtester.ai to determine your deliverability score. Tools like Barracuda Central, Microsoft SNDS, and Sender Score are great for checking sender reputation.

Avoid Adding Images To Your First Cold Email

Setting up a cold email drip campaign can be very exciting. But make sure you keep your first email text-only to ensure better email delivery rates.

You see, adding an image creates a bad text-to-image ratio – something that can trigger spam filters. You can always add images in your follow-up emails once you get the conversation going.

Limit Yourself To Emailing Only 50 People per Day

If you get your cold emails right, you can expect a 20% reply rate. But you have to do this without maxing Gmail’s limit of 50 recipients.

Also, it’s far better to send 50 emails every day instead of 250 emails one day a week. Spam check filters prefer quality over quantity.

Keep Your Email List Clean

Your email list should consist of targeted recipients to whom you can send relevant content. Moreover, people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer will likely mark you as spam.

Similarly, you should verify specific emails to reduce the bounce rate. Remove any hard bounces (wrong or misspelled emails, redundant emails, etc.) immediately and soft bounces (no opens, larger email file size, etc.) after multiple attempts.

Using an Email Spam Checker Can Improve Your Sender Reputation

While email marketing experts are always discussing tips to improve open rates, test email content, and craft effective subject lines, it’s equally important to understand common deliverability issues. After all, what’s the use of having an email marketing campaign if your emails aren’t even read?

If you too plan on growing your business, make sure you sign up for QuickMail’s free trial to nail cold email outreach.