7 Email Deliverability Myths Busted

Nothing matters if your email doesn't land in the inbox.

This week I sat down with Sam Tuke. He's the founder at a company called Lightmeter. Their software helps sales teams land in the primary inbox.

There are a ton of myths and ideas about deliverability, so I wanted to go straight to the source.

He dropped some serious wisdom and busted some myths. Sam is a wealth of knowledge on all things deliverability.

Check it out:

Email Deliverability: A Founder Chat w/ Sam Tuke @ Lightmeter (YC W22) In this video Will Allred, a Lavender Co-Founder, sits down with Sam Tuke, the co-founder and CEO at Lightmeter, to discuss email deliverability. Email deliverability is an under-discussed topic that can have massive impact on your email performance. Sam discusses common myths and mistakes teams are making that keep them out of the inbox and/or land them in spam. Lightmeter is a "SendGrid for sales email" product that helps companies monitor and correct potential delivery issues.

Here are some quick takeaways:

1. Video can be your first touch.

Contrary to what I told you last week. It turns out your domain reputation is WAY more important than your use of links, images, or videos in your email.

Now... if your domain reputation is shoddy, don't start laying on the pictures. A bad reputation means those things will be viewed poorly.

2. Deliverability is like a credit score

If you put good out there and get good back, you won't see deliverability as a problem.

Like a credit score there's a lot of weird stuff that impacts it.

3. Spikes in email sends are bad

Gmail, Microsoft, etc., pick up on high outflows of email. This signals to inbox providers that you're automating. Automation signals spam or a "promotion."

4. Reply rates matter

Inbox providers want to see that you're sending relevant information. This means you need to get replies. So, Lavender is apparently also a deliverability tool. (nice)

5. Link and open tracking hurt deliverability

This one is pretty simple. Having delivery issues? Turn these off.

6. Warming services are not all built the same

Some warming services are only warming your emails against Gmail. This means you'll get zero benefit if you reach out to enterprise customers on Outlook.

7. Create subdomains for different types of emails

Your company likely sends marketing, transaction, and sales emails. They should all have a different subdomain associated with them.

Those should be warmed according to how much traffic you expect to send from them.