How to Improve Email Deliverability with Apollo

Overview

It doesn't matter how much of a wizard with words you are, or how good your email strategy is, if your emails aren't landing in your prospects' inboxes. Before you embark on any email outreach, you must follow deliverability best practices and set your mailboxes up for success.

Check out the following sections to maintain a healthy domain reputation and improve email deliverability rates with Apollo.

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How to Track Email Deliverability in Apollo: A Checklist

Email deliverability is a tough nut to crack and not easy to understand. For most, it’s a black box. For everyone, it's an ongoing process that's never a one-and-done exercise.

Use Apollo to visualize areas of opportunity and gain actionable insights to improve your deliverability rates.

Follow this 8-step deliverability checklist to make ensure your emails land in the right inboxes at the right time.

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Step 1: Configure and Authenticate Your Domains

You may need your IT, engineering, or web team to complete these steps.

Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for all your sending domains.

Not sure if you already set it up correctly? Click Sequences > Run diagnostics to make sure.

Avoid sending cold emails from your company's primary domain. If you get spam-blocked, no one from your organization will be able to communicate with anyone. Choose a domain that relates to your primary business domain. For example, heyapollo.io instead of apollo.io.
Set up a custom tracking subdomain to track opens and clicks. For example, mail.apollo.io instead of apollo.io.
Set up Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS to monitor domain reputation.

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Step 2: Set Up Your Mailboxes and Configure the Settings

Once you've linked your mailboxes to Apollo, make sure you:

Set up your email signature. To build trust, make it information-rich. Include your full name, title, and company address.
Set up sending limits for the linked mailbox. This helps your email volume look more like a real person. Apollo's default, recommended sending limits are:

• 50 emails per day. You can increase this if you have a healthy domain reputation and your outreach sequences consistently gain more than a 5% reply rate.
• 6 emails per hour.
• 600 second delay between emails.

Configure your unsubscribe email link.
Click Settings. Then, head to the Email Settings on the right to:

• Turn on one-click unsubscribe headers.

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Step 3. Warmup Your Emails

If you’ve just set up a new email domain, we recommend that you manually warm it up before using it for any email campaigns by following general best-practices below.

• Don't start sending until a domain/subdomain has been around for at least 30 days.
• Run each new connected mailbox through the inbox ramp-up warmup. 
  • Inbox ramp-up is an email warmup solution that gradually and automatically increases the number of emails sent per day over the course of two weeks. It’s a warmup approach that adheres to best practices from email providers like Google and Microsoft, ensuring a smooth increase in your sending activity. 
  • Run inbox ramp-up warmup for every mailbox you connect to Apollo.
• Ask your closest contacts to respond to your emails first. If possible, then forward them as well. (Mailbox providers track opens and clicks which helps to signal that you’re sending relevant or “wanted emails.”).

Step 4. Use Good Targeting and Clean Data

• Only add verified email addresses to sequences.
• Other ways to optimize deliverability are to filter for leads who:
  • last updated in Apollo within 3 months 
  • opened emails sent from Apollo in the past 
  • Marked as likely to engage (available only on paid plans)
  • Have shown buying intent
• Limit how many recipients you target at the same company. One email to a server isn't as concerning to the spam filter as dozens of emails. 
• Avoid adding contacts with conflicts to a sequence, like contacts already in multiple sequences
• Create Sequence Rulesets to automatically exclude leads based on contact or account stage and set a sequence-level maximum # of emails to send in 24 hours. (Sequence Rulesets are only available for Professional and Custom plans.)

Step 5. Monitor Your Domain Sender Health

• Check in on your Deliverability Score and follow tips to improve your mailbox's score.
• Keep an eye on email performance per sequence, and via reports and dashboards. You'll now find % Spam Blocked and # Spam Blocked as available metrics.
• Monitor your domain reputation with Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS to take advantage of all the data available to you.  

Step 6. Structure Your Email Content

• Format your messages like a real person would when sending to a peer. Avoid excess design elements in your email, like:
  • Promotional images. You can use images but not in a way that feels spammy.
  • HTML tables and other formatting
  • Don’t go crazy with bold and italics
• Include few (if any) links
  • If you must include links, always use secured (https://) and not (http://)
  • Show the full link, instead of linking the URL to CTA text like "Click Here".
  • Don't use public link shorteners like bit.ly or link to files in Google Drive. That looks suspicious!
• Don’t include attachments 
• You included an opt-out link or set up one-click unsubscribe, right? 

Step 7. Advanced Tactics

• Leverage subdomains and non-primary domains to limit the impact of deliverability disruptions and to "fence" off different types of emails (sales, marketing, transactional)
• Leverage multiple inboxes (ideally across multiple subdomains / domains ) by linking additional mailboxes to Apollo and using mailbox rotation — as long as you're acting like a legitimate business sender
  • Be sure to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for these, too!
  • Before you add multiple domains make sure you’re sending enough with the first domain. It’s better to send emails using subdomains and accounts before using fresh domains. 
• Set up multiple A/B tests for each email in a sequence — this allows you to experiment with subject lines or email content to optimize for high-engagement emails 

Step 8. Repair Damaged Deliverability

• Stop using the damaged domain and warm until health is restored (weeks to months)
• Rotate in a ready domain (should be properly aged and warmed)
  • If you don't have one, set up and warm additional subdomains / domains
• Use alternate methods of outreach during recovery, including calling and LinkedIn
• Reconfigure your setup to look like a legitimate business sender (by following the steps above) and continually monitor your domain reputation
• Scale up slowly (~25 additional sends per day), starting with your most receptive audiences (e.g., personal contacts, only engaged prospects —using engagement activity filters)

For professional help with your deliverability for outbound, contact Apollo partner Senders.
Have support questions? Reach out to Apollo technical support.