Cold email deliverability checklist

Deliverability is whether your emails reach the people you send them to, and where they land when they do. Mailbox providers such as Gmail and Microsoft decide placement on every message. Nobody can promise the inbox, but the steps below remove the most common reasons cold email ends up in spam or bounces.

Work through it before your first campaign, and come back to it whenever results drop.

1. Your domain and mailbox

• SPF is published for your domain. It lists the servers allowed to send for you. See What is SPF.
• DKIM is turned on for your domain. In Google Workspace you generate the key in the Admin console and publish it in DNS. See What is DKIM.
• DMARC exists, even if it starts in monitoring mode. See What is DMARC.
• Your domain can receive mail (MX records). Replies and bounce notices need somewhere to go. See What are MX records.
• The mailbox looks like a real person. A full name, a profile photo and a short signature help recipients trust the message.
• A new mailbox or domain starts slowly. See How to prepare a new sending account.

If you send from a free @gmail.com address, Google manages SPF, DKIM and DMARC for gmail.com and you cannot change them. Read Gmail vs Google Workspace for cold email to decide which suits you.

2. Your prospect list

• Only contact people you have a genuine, lawful reason to contact. Distro's responsible-use policy asks you to confirm this before your first send.
• Do not use purchased, rented or scraped lists.
• Remove addresses you know are wrong. Distro marks addresses with a bad format as Invalid and leaves them out of campaigns. Role addresses such as info@ or sales@ and disposable domains are marked Risky.
• Keep people who unsubscribed or bounced out. Distro does this for you through the Unsubscribed list under People.

More detail: Keeping your prospect list clean.

3. Your message

• Write to one person, in plain language, about something relevant to them.
• Keep links to a minimum and never use URL shorteners. See Links in cold email.
• Avoid all-caps subjects, long strings of punctuation and pushy sales phrases. The Checks tab in a template shows warnings for these.
• Check every personalization variable has a value or a fallback, so nobody gets "Hi ,".
• Give people a clear way to stop hearing from you. See Unsubscribes, Do Not Contact, and when to stop.

4. Your sending settings in Distro

A new email campaign starts with conservative defaults. The pacing settings are in its Autopilot settings, and the tracking and unsubscribe switches are in its Settings panel. Review them before you launch.

In an Email + LinkedIn campaign, Track emails and Unsubscribe link are also off by default.

The daily limit belongs to each campaign. Two campaigns sending from the same mailbox each use their own limit, so add them up when you plan volume. Read Gmail sending limits explained for how Distro's limit, Google's limit and a sensible operating range differ.

5. After you launch

Watch the numbers on Analytics and on each campaign: Sent, Replied, Bounced and Unsubscribed.

• Bounces climbing? Pause the campaign and clean the list. See Why emails bounce.
• No replies at all? Test placement with a few colleagues on different providers, and review Why cold emails go to spam.
• People asking to be removed? Distro stops and suppresses them automatically when the reply clearly asks. Take the hint about targeting or frequency too.
• Google refusing sends? See Google sending limit reached.