Staying out of spam
Practical rules for inbox health when sending cold email.
Updated
Mailbox providers judge your inbox by how people react to it. Bounces and spam complaints hurt; replies help.
- Verify before you send. Verifying an email costs 0.1 credits and catches addresses that would bounce. Keep bounces under 5%.
- Start slow. A new inbox should send 20–50 a day, rising over several weeks.
- Keep gaps between sends (the default 90 seconds is fine) and send inside business hours.
- Write like a person: short, plain text, one clear question. Avoid lots of links, images and words like "free" in subject lines.
- Personalise with their name and company, and say why you're writing to them.
- Use several inboxes for volume instead of pushing one hard.
- Honour unsubscribes: every email includes a one-click unsubscribe link, and we stop emailing anyone who uses it.
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your domain in Google Workspace. Most Workspace domains have SPF and DKIM already; check with your admin.
If replies drop suddenly or bounces jump, pause the campaign and check your list before sending more.