One of the most important things determining whether your cold email campaign will be successful or not is the deliverability. If your emails are not landing in your recipients’ inboxes, they’re not going to be opened and they’re not going to be read.
Worse, they may wind up in spam or blacklisted—all your outreach efforts will be for naught.
Email deliverability is more than a technical consideration. It is the prerequisite of ensuring your cold outreach is reaching the right people—in the first place. In the competitive landscape, getting to the inbox is as important as crafting the right message.
Why email deliverability tools are necessary to reach the inbox
There are so many moving parts between the moment you hit send and when your email lands in somebody’s inbox. Even more so if it is a cold outreach. If you don’t have the proper tools, it can be almost impossible to guarantee that your emails are being opened, not getting caught by spam filters, and not building a bad reputation.
Email deliverability software allows you to keep track of and test important aspects of your email campaigns such as domain reputation, spam score testing, inbox placement, and much more. Getting the right tools for deliverability won’t suddenly land you in inboxes out of thin air, but they can give you an edge.
Key features of email deliverability tools
Not all tools are created the same​, but having a sense of the most prevalent factors impacting your deliverability can keep you better informed. Below are what you should care about most as you compare the top tools to level up your cold email game.
Domain reputation monitoring
Your sender reputation plays a critical role in deciding whether your emails are delivered to the inbox or marked as spam.
These domain reputation monitoring tools are responsible for keeping an eye out for how your domain looks to different email service providers (ESPs) to make sure that everything is being regarded positively. They warn you when your domain is at risk of getting blacklisted, or if there’s a drop in your sender score that could harm your deliverability.
đź”– Relevant Reading: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Improving Domain Reputation
Inbox placement tests
An inbox placement test shows whether or not your emails are allowed by different email providers to take up space in their inboxes. Inbox placement tests scan your email campaigns to determine whether they are landing in the inbox, the promotions tab, or the spam folder.
These tests can give you an idea how ESPs are receiving your mail, and any modifications you may need to do to get you placed better.
đź”– Relevant Reading: Warmy’s Research Team released Understanding ESP Blocks: Causes, Types, and Prevention, a report which discusses in great detail how various ESPs determine inbox placement.Â
Spam score checking
Your spam score measures the likelihood of a recipient’s email client to flag your message as spam. So how do tools that audit your spam score work?T hey look at your email content, subject line, and headers to see if they contain common spam triggers that will make deliverability more difficult for you.
Blacklist alerts
When you are listed on a spam blacklist, you may experience delivery issues. After all, being blacklisted means your sender reputation is poor. ESPs will take note of this. Blacklist monitoring will alert you if your domain or IP is listed on any of the top blacklists, which could prevent your emails from being delivered. These alerts allow you to monitor new developments that can impact your reputation, and help you take timely action to resolve them.
đź”–Relevant Reading: Are Blacklists Killing Your Emails? A Deep Dive into How They Influence Email Providers is a report from the Warmy Research Team contains comprehensive insights on how third-party blacklists affect the way different ESP process your emails.
Warmup automation
For new domains or IPs, warmup automation ramps up your sending volume across gradually to ensure that you build a good reputation with email providers. A warmup tool simulates natural email communication by sending emails to real inboxes over time, allowing your domain to gain trust and credibility with ESPs.
This gradual process helps you avoid the spam filters, ensuring your emails are delivered successfully when you’re ready to send at full scale. A solid warmup solution pays off if you want your cold email campaigns to hit the ground running without having to worry about deliverability issues.
Best email deliverability tools for cold outreach
When cold email outreach success is what you’re after, it’s essential you also have the right email deliverability tools in your stack. Here’s a list of the best tools to improve your deliverability.Â
Tool #1: GlockApps for spam filter testing
GlockApps focuses on making it an invaluable tool for understanding how your emails are treated by different ESPs. It helps identify whether your emails are reaching the inbox, the spam folder, or the promotions tab, giving you insights into the effectiveness of your cold email campaigns.
Key features:
- Spam score checker: Runs your emails through major filters like Google Spam Filter, Barracuda, and SpamAssassin to show you a detailed analysis on your spam score.
- Real-time placement data: Gives you a rundown on where your emails placed—inbox, spam folder, or sub-folders.
Tool #2: Mailgun for validating email lists and optimizing campaigns
Mailgun is a robust email API service that helps ensure that your cold outreach emails are getting delivered and provides the insights needed to make adjustments for better performance. it enables senders to send, track, test, and optimize emails effortlessly from one platform.
Key features:
- Email validation: Utilizes actual data to verify email addresses and ensure list hygiene. This keeps bounce rates at a minimum.
- Reputation monitoring: Keeps an eye on IPs and domains and scans them against blacklists and spam traps, providing senders immediate and actionable insights to correct issues before they cause long-term consequences.
- Flexible email API solution: Provides seamless integration of email into various applications for tracking of analytics and performance across email service providers, device types, and locations.Â
Tool #3: ZeroBounce for email list management and spam trap detection
ZeroBounce is a leading email validation tool that specializes in email list management and spam trap detection. For cold emailers looking to improve deliverability, ZeroBounce helps clean up email lists by identifying invalid, inactive, or malicious email addresses that could harm deliverability.
Key features:
- Email list management: Helps reduce bounce rates by cleaning list, identifying spam traps, and removing invalid email addresses automatically with the real-time email validation API.
- Â Email scoring: AI email score analyzes segments of your email list and generates a score from 1-10 to indicate the likelihood of reaching a real person.Â
- Email activity data: Identify your most active subscribers in the last 30-180 days so you can segment your lists for optimal performance.
Tool #4: Smartlead for scalable cold email outreach
Smartlead is a powerful email automation platform designed to help cold emailers scale their outreach while ensuring high deliverability.Â
Key features:
- Dedicated server: Enjoy high-end US and Europe servers for stable and reliable performance that will help you create a positive sender reputation in no time!
- Simplified technical setup: Ensures your MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly configured
- Fast clean up tool for email lists: Decrease your bounce rates with clean and validated email addresses only
Tool #5: Warmy.io for automated warmup and inbox placement optimization
Warmy.io is the most feature-rich and strongest email deliverability tool out there. Designed to help businesses maximize their cold email campaigns by improving inbox placement, Warmy ensures your emails not only reach the inbox but that they are also optimized for engagement and better performance across multiple ESPs.
In a nutshell, Warmy is focused on setting you up for success.Â
What makes Warmy truly the best email deliverability tool? While most tools above do only one or some of the things, such as check your DNS records, test your inbox placement, or track your spam score, Warmy brings them all together—filling the gap to give you the ultimate tool to boost your email delivery and let the sales rain down upon you.
Here’s why Warmy is truly the best email deliverability tool for cold emailing:
AI-powered warm-up with options to tailor preferences
One of Warmy’s best features is its AI-powered warm-up. The deliverability of cold email campaigns depends on establishing trust with ESPs and avoiding spam filters, and Warmy makes sure this is done automatically and effectively. Warmy helps to build your domain credibility and improve inbox placement by slowly warming your email volume and simulating real inbox engagement.
This automatic handling of warmup problems takes the stress out of manual warming up—making it the ideal choice for companies that want to grow their cold email outreach efforts in volume without jeopardizing deliverability.
Also, the Warmup Preferences feature lets you set how you want the warmup to be distributed across different providers, as well as if you want to use B2B or B2C customers for engagement patterns.
Comprehensive Domain Health Hub
Instead of monitoring individual email addresses, Warmy.io provides a domain-level health dashboard with the following features:
- A domain health score based on authentication, blacklist status, and inbox placement tests
- Capability to monitor your spam rate trends and overall deliverability performance with weekly or monthly tracking options.
- Comprehensive DNS status checks to easily validate SPF, DKIM, DMARC records for stronger authentication & security.
- Optimized multi-domain monitoring so users can manage all their domains from one dashboard
Template Checker
Our free Template Checker checks your email content against potential spam triggers and formatting inconsistencies. With the new Chrome Extension, you can easily test your email templates before you hit send on large scale email campaigns to improve your deliverability. Think of it as a last checkpoint. If you pass the template checker’s criteria, your chances of landing in your recipients’ inboxes are greater.
Advanced seed lists for better and targeted inbox placement
Warmy’s advanced seed lists uses real email addresses which ensures more accurate data and better results. Using these seed lists, Warmy simulates actual recipient interactions, helping to boost your domain’s reputation and improve deliverability rates across a variety of email providers.
Emails are opened, read, scrolled through, and clicked, further reducing the chances of landing in spam. And if an email somehow ends up in spam, it is manually taken out and labeled as important to let ESPs know that your emails and your domain are to be trusted.
Go with the best choice for cold emailing success
With its AI-powered warm-up, domain health monitoring, seamless integrations, spam score analysis, and real email seed lists, Warmy is the ultimate solution for cold emailers who want to optimize their deliverability and drive higher engagement and conversions.
If you’re looking to increase your cold email open rates, clicks, and sales, Warmy provides everything you need to succeed—from day one. Sign up today. Your cold email strategy deserves it.
