Thoughts on Email Deliverability
An old colleague reached out this week to talk about email deliverability - something we thought about a lot when I was in the expert network world. When your business relies on sending thousands of invites, intros, or follow-ups, a few percentage points in deliverability can make or break your outreach.
I'm not a technical marketer, but I’ve seen enough to know there are three big levers that actually matter.
1. Technical setup — get the foundations right
Deliverability starts with trust. In email terms, that means the internet needs to be sure you are who you say you are.
- Use a custom sending domain, not a generic Gmail or Outlook address.
- Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — the trio of records that prove authenticity. (Valimail: SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained)
- If it’s a new domain, warm it up slowly over a few weeks. Don’t go from zero to ten thousand sends overnight. (Zoho: How to warm up your sender domain)
For initial outreach, it can help to use a dedicated domain rather than your main company one. It keeps your day-to-day communications protected if anything goes wrong — like a sudden spike in bounces or spam flags. Once you’ve built a relationship with someone, switch back to your primary domain for ongoing contact. It’s a subtle but important distinction: new contacts get a clean, low-risk domain; established relationships get your trusted one.
2. The email itself — keep it simple
Even with a perfect setup, bad structure gets you filtered. Some basics I’ve learned:
- Keep HTML lightweight. Over-engineered emails look like spam.
- Limit links — around 10 seems to be the safe ceiling.
- Stick to clean branding: one or two fonts, restrained colours, small logo.
- Always include a plain text version — inboxes trust them more.
Think about what you’d personally open. That’s the tone and layout you want.
3. Targeting — the biggest factor by far
Most deliverability issues aren’t technical at all — they’re about who you’re emailing.
If your lists are messy, outdated, or too broad, bounces and spam complaints will tank your reputation fast. In my experience, sending fewer but better-targeted emails always beats scale. The “right” 100 contacts outperform the “maybe relevant” 1,000 every single time.
Getting this right depends on your CRM hygiene, segmentation, and clarity on who you actually want to talk to.
In Summary
At its core, good deliverability is just good manners: respect your experts, don’t waste their time, and make it easy to trust you.
That’s 90% of the battle.