Email rules for managing mass messages

I've sent 10 million cold emails with near-perfect deliverability. The secret is to never send more than 20 emails per day per inbox. This is the biggest fumble of all time when scaling cold email campaigns. People want to scale quickly, so they crank up the volume to 100 emails per day per inbox. That's the fastest way to go to spam, ruin your deliverability, and basically have to start your whole campaign over. Instead, keep the sending constant per inbox: 20 per day maximum. If you want to scale, think horizontally, not vertically: 1) Purchase more domains 2) Set up new inboxes on those domains 3) Keep each inbox at that 20/day sweet spot Think of it like pawns on a chessboard. If you want to scale your outreach, just purchase more pawns and put them on the board. Don't concentrate all your risk and volume on a single domain because Google or Outlook will pick up on that pattern immediately. I've personally scaled three separate businesses to seven figures using cold email as our main acquisition channel, and this rule has been non-negotiable across all campaigns. And while you're at it, always warm up your new cold email domains for at least 14 days before you start sending actual outreach messages. Let Google or Outlook know you're a human being by mimicking human behavior first. People get impatient, fumble the bag, and go straight to spam because they don't want to wait 14 days for the warm-up process. But guess what? You're just going to go to spam anyway if you rush it. Follow these two rules religiously, and your deliverability will thank you.

We analyzed 27M+ cold emails. Here are 6 things that drive replies: 1. Concise subject lines - 10-19 characters have the highest reply rates of 1.11%-1.48% - 50-60 characters see a decrease to 0.74%-0.95% ↳ keep your subject lines short and clear 2. Timing of follow-ups  - the first email typically sees a median reply rate of 1% - subsequent follow-ups can match or exceed this rate, but... - emails beyond the third have less than 30% efficacy of the first few ↳ keep the first few emails strong 3. Focus on smaller, targeted campaigns - campaigns targeting 0-50 people get 3x more replies than those with 1000+ ↳ specific messages work better than mass emails 4. Opt for low email volume - sending 1-20 emails daily gets 4x more replies than sending more than 100 ↳ use Woodpecker.co inbox rotation to spread out sending volume 5. Monitor your bounce rate - keeping bounce rate below 2% can improve reply rates by over 60% ↳ maintain a clean and updated email list 6. Weekend vs weekday send times - weekdays get steady replies, weekend replies drop by 38%, but competition is lower ↳ experiment with send times to find your optimal window Which tactics bring success in your campaigns?

ICYMI: There are new email rules going into effect for Google on February 1, 2024, and Yahoo in Q1. Failure to comply could cause your emails to be rejected, so make sure to add this to your list over the next 6 weeks. These rules apply to any company sending more than 5,000 messages to Gmail accounts or Yahoo-owned inboxes within a 24-hour period. I've seen some confusion about how this is calculated, so here are some facts direct from Google FAQs, which appear to be the same as Yahoo: - For now, this includes recipients with personal addresses ending in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com or @aol.com, though it may extend to recipients with corporate accounts in the future. - It also applies to senders from any domain or email provider. - The count is aggregated by domain (e.g., if 100 people with the same sender domain each send 50 emails to gmail accounts within a 24-hour period, that counts as 5,000). - The count includes emails from both humans and systems (transactional emails, automations, etc.). With stuff like this, it’s typically better to be safe than sorry and assume they apply to your company. It’s also expected that other providers will follow their lead. There are three main things to do: 1. Authenticate your email and align your “from addresses.” This is pretty technical and instructions differ by provider. Some links to guides from common ESPs in the comments. 2. Enable 1-click unsubscribe from commercial emails and process within 2 days. It’s unclear how broadly they will define “commercial” but it explicitly doesn’t include transactional emails (e.g., password resets, form submit confirmations). 3. Stay below a spam rate. Google recommends staying below 0.1% and will now enact more harsh penalties if it goes above 0.3%. Check the comments for more detailed resources from reputable sources and platforms you might be using. #yourweeklymap #deliverability