Email deliverability is an important topic for anyone using email in their business.

If you’re sending cold emails to people that match your buyer persona with a perfect pitch, surely you’ll get a high reply rate and book lots of meetings — right?

Not necessarily.

Just because you added your prospect’s email address to the To field, it doesn’t mean they’ll see your email.

Your email may still be delivered, but it could end up in the spam folder. Another place you don’t want to end up in is the Promotions tab.

If you’re landing in either of those places too often, your cold emails won’t deliver results.

You need to avoid both of those places at all costs.

Even though the Promotions tab isn’t as bad as spam, people don’t expect a personal email to go there and if your sales emails are, it gives away the fact that you’re using your account for mass outreach.

So, how do you avoid it and ensure you land in the main inbox?

In this guide, I’m going to show you actionable ways to ensure your emails land in your prospects‘ main inbox, where they’re going to read them, and reply.

We’ll look at reasons for poor deliverability, how to improve it, and tips to ensure your emails stay out of spam no matter how many outreach emails you’re sending.

Let’s jump straight in.

What is Email Deliverability and Why Should You Care?

First, let’s define what we mean by email deliverability.

Email deliverability is how well your email can deliver messages to a recipient’s inbox.

Good email deliverability will mean your email lands in their main inbox folder. If you’ve been using your email naturally for a few months with co-workers and clients, chances are that your email deliverability will be good.

But, if you’re planning to launch a cold email campaign, your email service provider will notice that your activity is changing.

If you send 10 emails by hand to your team on Monday, but send 200 out all at once on Tuesday, it won’t look right.

ESPs like Outlook and Gmail will see that you’re using your email in an unnatural way, and you’ll end up landing in the Promotions category, or worse, Spam.

If that’s the case, no one is going to reply to you. Your cold email campaigns won’t generate any new sales, and you’ll be back to paying for Facebook Ads.