Email Account Settings

It amazes me how few people know about + addressing for emails and how useful they are. 🙈 What is + addressing? 🤔 Basically, you can add a + after the username part of your email address and then write any unique word you want afterwards and this will still be a valid email address you can receive on. 🤯 For example if your email address is joe.bloggs@company.com, you can also use joe.bloggs+LinkedIn@company.com as an email address. If anyone were to send an email to this address you would still receive it and you'll see the full email in the To: field. Why is this useful? 💡 1️⃣ If you're going to an Expo where you have to put in your email address so that everyone can scan your badge and spam you for months on end afterwards, you could use joe.bloggs+ExpoName@company.com. This way you'll still receive your registration information and you can keep the email working for a couple of weeks after the event so you get emails from people you want to hear from, then set up a rule to junk all future emails to that address. 2️⃣ Let's say you need to sign up for something that requires a unique email address but you've already used your work one. Create another just by adding a +word. 3️⃣ Additional security method. I've spoken a lot over the years about having unique passwords for every website you sign up to. This is because if a hacker steals your email address and password and you use the same password for multiple applications, you're at a big risk of being breached on other accounts. So if you also have unique usernames: joe.bloggs+Amazon joe.bloggs+PayPal etc Then it makes it even harder for hackers to break into your accounts. Plus, if an account email address is compromised and leaked, you'll know exactly where it was leaked from. This is also useful to work out whether companies are selling your data. Are you already using + addressing in your life and do you have other examples of how you're using them? Did you even know this was a thing? Let me know in the comments 👇🏻 #ithintsandtips #email #security #spam

If your cold emails are starting to randomly land in spam you are not the only one. Here is what we found out so far: - Without spintax (randomizing your content), I am talking about 5+ variations with multiple words randomized, we have seen accounts burn in a matter of days. - Google in particular is starting to catch the structure of emails so in your different variations you should be using longer variations, and shorter variations, having lots of space, and some with no spacing. - Open rate, clickthrough rate tracking, and adding links has been long dead. Don’t do it. You shouldn’t be adding more than one image in the whole sequence and even that can cause your email to go into spam. - Daily manual and automatic checks of the inboxes are almost mandatory at this point. A good warmup tool to help with that is Warmy.io - Email channel. Reliable. - Your sending tool IP can also be banned. We started using dedicated IPs on SmartReach.io since we saw Google was banning shared IPs more (note this is different from your email IPs) - Spam words need to be at zero - check mailmeteor’s tool here, basically any spam keyword like finance, guaranteed, %, funds, etc. can flag your message and send you into spam, especially for newer accounts. - The older the accounts the higher authority it has - it’s clear that newer accounts (even those prewarmed up for 2-3 weeks) get more passes and can get away with some spam words, less spintax, and even having more images and links at times. - You should be rotating inboxes - we do it every time they burn which can happen in a week, a month, or more.  - Certain client accounts always burn faster which I think is a mix of the audience, content, and lower reply rates - eg. financial related content or anyone targ IT related titles since they - A mini cheat code to get your reply and lead rate up - we reengage the not-interested responses across different clients (of course only ones that match the ICP). These prospects tend to respond more to cold emails, so they can help with improving deliverability and often have a higher lead rate. Honestly, the way I see us moving forward is: - Automating email account creation - you can build this with make - Automatic inbox rotation based on checks if accounts are burnt or not - I know QuickMail has a version of this - Diversifying on more email servers - we use Google and Outlook right now, but are looking to add 1-2 more. AMA

Gmail users, here's a handy trick to track how your email address is being used. If you provide your Gmail work address in organization and vendor forms, simply insert a "+" and a unique identifier (e.g., a vendor's name) before the "@" symbol. For example: first.last+vendorname@yourcompany.com Gmail will ignore the identifier, but it will let you track how a recipient uses and distributes your email address. For example, if you add "+calbar" when you sign up for a California Bar event, when you later see emails from other groups sent to that address, you'll know where they got it. You can also use Gmail filters to archive, label, or star any emails addressed to first.last+vendorname to help triage a crowded inbox. This feature has been around for years, but I find that many people don't know about it. Now you're in the know.

🚨 Fake signups using real Gmail addresses? It’s happening, and it’s not easy to detect. I recently took a closer look at Emailnator, a disposable identity provider offering Gmail-based throwaway inboxes at scale. These addresses look completely normal (@gmail.com), but are generated using Gmail’s own aliasing and dot-variation features. 🔍 Why it matters: - They bypass basic filters that block known temp mail domains - Appear legitimate to most defenses - Are being used in the wild to abuse SaaS free tiers, automate fake signups, and scale fraud In the post, I break down: - How Emailnator works under the hood - Why Gmail normalization is a critical but underused defense - Real abuse patterns we observed across platforms Plus, we’re sharing a dataset of 46K Gmail variants we extracted from their API, and how to check if your platform has been hit. 📖 Read the post: https://lnkd.in/e48vhAvE If you’ve seen an unexplained spike in Gmail signups or weird alias patterns like my.email+offer1@gmail.com, this might be worth a closer look.

The biggest myth in cold email today? That high volume = high results. After a dense (and brutally honest) webinar with some of the best minds in deliverability, one message stood out clearly: Your sending domain is your most valuable asset. And most people are burning it to the ground without even realising. The new rule of cold email success in 2025 isn't about tools or copy. It's about long-term infrastructure thinking, the stuff that doesn't show up in your outreach dashboard but determines whether you inbox or land in spam. Here are 4 big shifts you should make if you care about results that last: 1. Diversify Everything Use multiple domain registrars, email providers (Google, Outlook, SMTP), sequencers, and even IP geos. Don’t let your whole system rely on one platform. 2. Send Less Per Domain Volume is the #1 reason domains get burned. Instead of pushing 150 emails from one domain, spread 50 emails each across three. Smaller volume = longer domain lifespan. 3. Aged Domains Are a Cheat Code Especially for Outlook deliverability. Domains that are a few years old inbox far better than fresh ones. Yes, they cost more. But they save a lot more. 4. Measure at the Domain Level Your bounce and reply rates should be monitored domain by domain. Every month, cut the worst 20% (by reply rate) and replace them. This keeps your entire ecosystem healthy. Bonus: Subdomains, geo-TLDs, warmup strategy changes - there’s a lot more happening under the surface. But if you just internalise these 4, you’ll be ahead of 90% of senders. Big thanks to the panel for sharing real insights, not just theory: Christian Oland (RevGen Labs & RevReply) 🚀 Benjamin Reed ( RevyOps) Kidous Mahteme (Inframail) Dean Fiacco (ScaledMail) V. Frank Sondors 🥓 (Salesforge 🔥) ⚡Felipe Aranguiz (Instantly.ai) Ken Volk (Mailrun) Namit Jindal (Aerosend) Piotr Mikrut (Experiment5m) If you're building or scaling outbound in 2025, watch this space. The playbook is being rewritten.

Current insights on what works and doesn’t work for deliverability in 2024, going into 2025. Just a few weeks ago, Microsoft had a “cataclysm” of sorts which made deliverability from & to Outlook accounts absolutely awful. This has begun to clear up a bit as time passes, but we’ve gathered tons of valuable insights from this last deliverability crisis that’s given us clarity on the science behind deliverability. Here’s what we’re seeing is working, and what isn’t: 1. Develop infrastructure according to your target industry Each industry typically has their own go-to provider they use across the board. For example, when targeting enterprise, most of these companies use Microsoft, so sending from Outlook-based private infrastructure is more favorable in this case. Then for E-commerce, Gsuite is more favorable as most brands are using Google. Diversify your infrastructure accordingly. 2. Domain aging In the deliverability masterclass Dean Fiacco presented to The Outbound Code, one point he drove was the importance of aged domains and how there is a direct correlation between reputedly aged domains to consistent deliverability. This is because ESPs monitor new domains thoroughly since most spammers buy a new domain and start sending emails from them immediately. From what we’ve seen, 2 weeks of domain aging is the bare minimum we perform before sending to ensure accounts don’t just blow up day 1. 3. Warm-up Warm-up at the moment has a lot of gray area around it as there are senders that are generating great reply rates with little to no warm-up, while others say a month+ is necessary for good deliverability. Both cases are valid, but really it depends on the ESP you're using. For Gsuite, 2 weeks warm-up & domain aging is crucial, or else they’ll hurt your reputation fast. For Microsoft, really only need a few days warm-up, as they value IP reputation more than anything. My recommendation is to still just perform 2 weeks warm-up, then have some extra accounts on the backend warming for a few months in case you need to replace active ones. 4. Bad copy = spam If ESPs are detecting your cold email copy as a “spam cold email”, your emails are likely not even being sent in the first place. In cases where your campaign is getting 0 replies AND 0 bounces, odds are your provider is preventing you from sending emails. If this is the case for you, your email accounts could be completely fine, you just need to adjust the copy and try again. 5. Positive & Negative feedback loops When it comes to scaling outbound campaigns, the momentum of results you generate will determine your future deliverability. If you have a campaign that’s thriving, deliverability will remain strong and continue to be fruitful as your reputation continues to increase across senders. Vice Versa applies as well though, if you’re generating a lot of negative feedback, your accounts are eventually going to crash & burn.

I remember the first time a spambot attacked one of the sign-up pages at BuzzFeed. At first, we didn’t realize what was happening. We were looking at our email lists and saw that a ton of new subscribers were signing up for our newsletters that day — exciting! But then we looked a little closer. Almost all of the subscribers were from the same domain, yahoo.co.uk, which seemed odd. And then we looked even closer: The sign-ups were coming in so quickly — dozens of new yahoo.co.uk emails every minute — there was no way the email addresses were submitted by actual humans. That’s when we realized that something was seriously wrong. But we didn’t realize how much trouble we were in. We were the victims of a spambot, which had been crawling the web looking for a form like ours. These bots are usually looking for forums with a comment section where they can drop in a link to a page where someone can buy something, like pharmaceutical drugs. These bots don’t always realize that they’ve found a newsletter sign-up form — not a comment section. And if lots of bots end up on your list, it can cause serious deliverability issues. So what can you do about them? 1.) You can use a third-party tool to verify email addresses, like Kickbox, before adding them to your list. 2) You can use CAPTCHA, like we eventually did at BuzzFeed, to shut down bot activity on key forms. 3) You can set up a honeypot — a hidden field only a bot can see, and suppress any email address that fills out that field. 4) You can use double opt-in to require an extra confirmation before being added to the list. Your strategy might even involve multiple steps — many teams use CAPTCHA and double opt-in, for instance. Every newsletter should have a game plan for keeping their list clean. I’ve got more ideas here (https://lnkd.in/g89f2553) about how to build out the right strategy for your newsletter. ––– 📷 Below is a screenshot of the BuzzFeed newsletter page. There’s the CAPTCHA logo in the bottom right corner — three overlapping arrows of different colors — that indicates that the form is being secured by CAPTCHA.

90 minutes that will fix your deliverability... I recently joined an "Avengers-level" roundtable with 8 other leaders in the space—founders and leaders from Salesforge, Instantly, Inframail, Aeroleads, and top agencies—to cut through the noise. The 90-minute discussion was a masterclass in what's actually working right now, and some consensus-breaking truths emerged. Here are 4 of the hottest takes from the session: 1. Mailbox reputation is overhyped. It’s all about the DOMAIN. We spend hours worrying about individual inboxes. The reality? A damaged domain will sink every mailbox attached to it. The entire panel agreed: your primary focus should be on domain health and diversification, not mailbox-level tweaks. If reply rates drop, diagnose the domain first. 2. Aged domains are the closest thing to a "silver bullet" for Outlook. If you're struggling to land in Outlook inboxes, this is your lever. We’re not talking about domains aged 90 days. We’re talking about domains that are 10, 15, or even 20 years old. Ken from Mailrun shared that you can find these in GoDaddy auctions for the cost of a normal domain. This tactic alone is a game-changer. 3. Diversify EVERYTHING, not just your inboxes. This was my core message. Don't go all-in on Google or all-in on Microsoft. But the panel took it further: diversify your domain registrars (Porkbun, GoDaddy), your sending platforms (Instantly, Smartlead, etc.), and even your lead data providers. Fragility is the enemy; building a resilient, multi-layered infrastructure is the only way to protect yourself from the next algorithm change. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We also dove deep into: The ideal number of sends per domain (it's less than you think). Which TLDs (.com, .co, .xyz) are actually performing best. The real science behind warm-up pools and if they’re becoming less effective. If you are serious about cold email, you need to see this. The full, unfiltered 90-minute recording is in the comments below. 👇

Email addresses aren’t just a contact. They’re actually potential gateways, too. Your email address opens a door to your digital life. Once you share it, you’re opening up a door - not just to communication, but to unwanted attention, clutter, phishing - or even worse. Your email address is that crucial, so treat it with the security it deserves: ✍ Use a unique email address for each service you sign up for. Add the name of the website or company to it. This way, if leaked, you are aware and can address it. ✍ Make those addresses random, long, unguessable. Every company has a info@ email address. Guess what email address receives a lot of spam? ✍ Rotate them, and invalidate any that get misused.  ✍ Keep a personal email address that you only share with family and friends. Consider using email aliasing services. They’re often free, quick to set up, and allow you to create personalized addresses on the fly. This way, you can track who’s respecting your privacy, and who isn’t. As always, stay secure my friends! #EmailAliasing #Passwords #CyberSecurity