Your Cold Emails Aren't Landing in Inboxes - Here's Why
You're writing decent emails. Your subject lines are solid. Your offer makes sense. But they're going straight to spam.
You know this because you've checked. Maybe you tested with a Gmail account. Maybe you're seeing a 20-30% open rate when it should be double that. Or maybe you're getting bounces from addresses that should be valid.
The problem isn't your copy. It's your deliverability.
Cold email deliverability is the unsexy, technical part of cold email that most agencies ignore - or don't understand well enough to fix. But it's also the thing that determines whether your entire campaign works or doesn't.
I'm going to walk you through what's actually happening, why it matters, and what you need to do about it.
What's Actually Happening to Your Emails
When you hit send on a cold email, it doesn't just magically appear in someone's inbox. It goes through a gauntlet of spam filters, authentication checks, and reputation systems - most of which you can't see.
Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo - they're all scanning your email for dozens of signals:
- Does your domain have proper authentication setup (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)?
- What's your sending reputation on that domain?
- What's the IP address reputation?
- Are you sending from a domain that matches your