Email deliverability checklist:

5 things to do before you launch

your email campaign

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 Brian Minick Olga Zamiatina

Chief Operating Officer Deliverability Manager

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What we’ll cover today

Domain check: age, configuration (MX records, SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

Domain preparation: warm-up and further outreach strategy

List quality monitoring: deliverability impact during outreach

Email validation: Activity Data and risky email addresses

Inbox placement testing: content, images & other aspects

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Domain check: age, configuration (MX record, SPF,
DKIM, DMARC)

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● Is your domain old enough to send?
● Why is it important to configure your domain?
● How to check domain configuration?

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 Domain age: the older, the better

Average age Good age

>3 weeks >3-4 months

Activity period

Last 3-4 weeks

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 Domain configuration: authenticate your mail
service before you send

Why to configure:

● Unauthenticated emails are considered and not trusted by recipients.

● Emails may be rejected or delivered to spam.

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 Domain configuration: authenticate your mail
service before you send
How to check:

● https://www.mail-tester.com/ Section “You are (not) fully authenticated”

● Any online DNS check tool

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 Domain configuration: authenticate your mail
service before you send

Where to start fixing:

● Access to your hosting website - DNS Zone (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Bluehost etc)
● Access to your mail service admin panel
● Support section of your mail provider, hosting provider, your other tools to send emails

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Domain configuration: critical records to check
Record name Where located Purpose

specify the mail server

MX DNS Zone
responsible for accepting email

lists all the servers

SPF DNS Zone authorized to send emails
from a particular domain

DNS Zone + Admin panel cryptographic

DKIM authentication of sent
(GSuite\Office users)
emails
● instruct recipients for further
DMARC DNS Zone actions with your emails
based on SPF\DKIM check
● provide sender with the
outgoing email traffic data

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 Poll #1 🤔

Have you ever checked your domain

configuration?

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 Domain preparation: warm-up and further
outreach strategy

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● Warm-up routine: why to warm up? When to start and
to stop? How to warm up?
● How to build further outreach strategy: frequency,
speed

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 Domain warm-up routine
Why to warm up:

● warm-up builds your sending reputation by performing positive actions with your emails.
● Emails from domain without positive reputation are less trusted.

Use warm-up for:

● New domains / new email accounts

● Domains / Templates in spam
● Balancing cold outreach

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 Domain reputation: manual warm-up

Manually
● send emails to “warm” contacts: friends,
colleagues
● they should open, reply, mark not spam

Pros:
● Looks natural, more trusted

Cons:
● You don’t have as many friends as
needed
● Eventually you will have no friends

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 Domain reputation: automated warm-up

Automatically

● Emails are sent, opened, removed

from spam, replied without actions
from your side

Pros:
● time saving
● no limitations in # of recipients

Cons:
● Potential risks of using any
automation
● pricing

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 Life after warm-up: how to stop preparing and start
sending
Stop warming up

● Return to warm-up when you

feel your rates drop

Continue warm-up

● Balance your cold traffic with

warm by continuous usage of
warm-up

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warm-up features

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warm-up features

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List quality: deliverability impact before and after
you send

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A healthy list is one you build yourself
The best way to collect emails: validate them from the start
● Deal with unengaged subscribers
● Once is not enough: check your list every quarter
● Validate it before every important campaign
● Verify emails in real time with an email validation API

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ZeroBounce validation detection features

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 Poll #2 🤔

How often do you clean your email list?

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 Email activity: How engaged are your
subscribers?

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● How to further validate catch-all emails
● Segment your most active subscribers
● Target them with personalized content to boost engagement &
overall deliverability
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 Inbox testing: What prevents you from
landing in the inbox?

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Content: is it getting past spam filters?
Images: is there enough content to support them?
● Links: are they all direct, functional links?
● Content formatting

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Inbox testing: Example

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 Email Server Tester & Blacklist Monitoring

● Sign up for a free account on ZeroBounce.net and use our email server tester &
monitoring tools for free
● Send a simple email to your designated email address we provide, and wait for the
results

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Questions

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 Let’s Stay in Touch

Olga Zamiatina Brian Minick

olga@reply.io brian@zerobounce.net

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