So you’ve spent all this time designing a clever cold outreach campaign for your business, but it isn’t working. You’ve run the spam checks we recommended in our previous article and you’ve confirmed that your emails are indeed getting stuck in limbo.

Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world. This is just a small bump along the way to running a successful email campaign. Our guide below will run you through the steps you need to take to ensure your emails start finding their way to the warm and fuzzy inboxes of your prospects once again.

Step 1: Send personalized email content that’s useful & relevant.

When it comes to email content, there’s one main question you need to ask yourself:

“Can we make the copy more relevant to improve and maintain our sender reputation?”

Now the concept of relevance runs deeper than you might think, because your lead list is probably full of contacts who fall under several different customer personas, right? Which means that if you aren’t segmenting your list and personalizing your copy based on each persona, some of your contacts will get emails that don’t quite resonate.

Making sure your emails are relevant to each and every contact will decrease the likelihood that they’ll get marked as spam and will increase your positive response rate, which will play a part in getting you out of spam trouble. Which means you shouldn’t make your emails too “sales-y” either.

Also remember, if one of your sales rep’s email accounts or your email domain itself have gotten into spam trouble, you cannot use that same copy again.

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Step 2: Remove tracking from your emails.

Most email automation software has conversion tracking switched on by default because it seems like a good idea to have “click” and “open” metrics available, to get more insight into how your emails are performing.

But if you’re getting blocked by spam filters, you should try turning off links that track opens and clicks becauses these are fairly obvious signs that a human didn't send the email, and email providers often use these to categorically mark your emails as spam.

Plus, open rate tracking in particular can often be inaccurate and therefore not very useful.

Step 3: Change your email domain.

If you're really in trouble, consider spinning up a new domain that you only use for cold emailing. Use GoDaddy and Outlook 365 to set it up, because G Suite inboxes talk to each other, which means Google sees what’s being sent and how it’s being received on the other end.

So if you’re sending hundreds of emails from G Suite to G Suite and only getting a handful of responses, it looks suspicious and you’ll get into trouble a lot faster.

If you’re using an email domain that was created within the last few months, you’ll want to “warm up” your domain’s email reputation before you start sending 100s of emails per day. Use the numbers in Step 4 as a guide.

Step 4: Decrease your email volume.

You should never send more than 500 emails per mailbox per day or 3,000 per week. Also make sure that if you’re emailing multiple contacts at the same company, never email more than 2 contacts at the same domain per day.

Use the following as volume guide for new domains.

Week 1: 25 new contacts per day

Week 2: 50-75 new contacts per day

Week 3: 100-150 new contacts per day

Week 4: 150-200 new contacts per day

You can increase by 50 emails per day every week from there, up to the maximum 500 per day.

Step 5: Set up IP white-labeling.

Email providers use your IP address to figure out whether or not to deliver your email to inboxes based on your reputation. If your IP reputation is damaged, set up SendGrid or another IP rental/white-labeling service for sending your cold emails.

SendGrid will give you a clean, dedicated IP address that you can associate with your existing email domain.

If you’re using a shared IP address, you’re sharing your sender reputation with other senders, which could be what is landing you in spam. So we highly recommend getting a fresh, dedicated IP if your existing one is hurting your results.

Get out spam and stay out of spam.

So there you have it. All is not lost. If your cold email campaign is getting blocked by spam filters, follow the steps above and you’ll be back to getting a steady stream of positive responses within a few short weeks.

Just remember to always stay on top of keeping your copy personalized, tracking and maintaining your sender reputation, and keeping your email volume within reasonable limits.

And if you’re not quite sure whether you’re in spam trouble or not, read our previous article here to find out.