Your email has to arrive

Lesson 12 of 31 in the course “Million Dollar Sales Course”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

Delivered, opened, clicked

In the last lesson you learned to write copy. But nobody reads an email sitting in spam. In “Sell Like Crazy”, Sabri Suby says an email has just three jobs: get delivered, get opened, get clicked. Most people think: upload the list, hit Send, done. It’s not automatic. Each step multiplies the next, so a loss at the very start cuts everything after it. Look at the picture: two creators, 1,000 subscribers each, equally good emails. One gets 95% delivered, the other 70%, and the second already has about a third fewer clicks. Suby calls it “small hinges swing big doors”. This lesson is about the first hinge: delivery.

The inbox watches how people treat you

Gmail, Outlook and other mailbox providers decide where to put your email based on your sender reputation. Suby compares it to a credit score. It’s built from three things: how many emails bounced off nonexistent addresses, how many people reported spam, and how people treat your emails. Plus: opened, read, replied, forwarded, pulled out of spam, added to contacts. Minus: deleted unopened and, worst of all, “Report spam”. The inbox learns from every one of those clicks. So the main way into the inbox isn’t technical: write what people are glad to get. You can wreck your reputation in one send, and fixing it takes weeks.

Case: Gmail and Yahoo tightened the rules

Since February 1, 2024, Gmail has required senders of 5,000+ emails a day to its users to follow three rules. Yahoo did the same. One: prove your emails really come from you by authenticating your domain, more on that next slide. Two: every marketing email needs one-click unsubscribe and a visible link in the body. Three: keep spam complaints below 0.1%, that is, under one per thousand emails, and never reach 0.3%. Why care if you send few emails? These are the openly stated rules the inbox judges everyone by. And one-click unsubscribe helps you too: people who don’t want to read leave quietly instead of hitting Spam.

Sign your emails with your own domain

The inbox needs proof that an email really comes from you, not a scammer. That’s what three records in your domain settings are for. SPF is the list of servers allowed to send email in your name. DKIM is a seal: nobody altered the email on the way. DMARC tells the inbox what to do with fakes. Sounds scary, but it takes 15 minutes: your email service shows you three lines, and you paste them where you bought your domain. Send from your own domain, like [email protected]. An email from an @gmail.com address sent through someone else’s email service looks like a fake to the inbox. A domain costs about a couple of coffees a year.

Start quietly: warm-up

A new email domain is like the new kid in class: nobody trusts it yet. Suby advises starting with small volumes and growing gradually, so your reputation has time to build. Send thousands of emails on day one and the inbox sees a spike from a stranger and gets suspicious. Start with your newest subscribers: they just left their email and are more likely to open. Remove addresses that bounce right away. And never buy lists: in their cold email book Robert Indries and Alex Berman warn that unverified addresses bounce 30–40% of the time, which instantly kills your reputation. A bought list is also illegal where consent is required, remember lesson 8.

A letter from a person, not an ad department

Many people make emails pretty, like a website: logo, banners, buttons. Suby says this hurts. Companies send that kind of email with ads, and the inbox knows it: the email lands in the Promotions tab or worse. A plain email, like one from a friend, reaches the main inbox more often, and by Suby’s account it sells better in his tests. Sign it with your name, not a brand. And keep the balance: about two thirds of emails useful, one third with an offer. You can tuck the offer into the P.S. of a useful email. If every email is “buy”, people stop opening, and the inbox notices.

Ask for a reply

The strongest plus for the inbox is a reply to your email. If people reply, you’re talking, and that’s definitely not spam. So in your very first email, ask a question that takes 5 seconds to answer. Misha’s: “Reply in one word: what do you edit right now?” It works three ways. The inbox sees a real conversation. You learn your Fred in his own words, which you’ll use for headlines. And the person feels there’s a real human behind the emails. You can also ask them to move the email to the main inbox or add you to contacts: another strong plus. Just don’t pressure or bribe them with prizes, simply explain why.

Do it yourself: delivery checklist

Go through the list before your first send. Domain: buy your own and paste in the three records your email service gives you. Unsubscribe: in every email, one click, no questions or guilt-tripping. First email: the gift, a few words about you, and one easy question to answer. Start: for the first days send a little, to your newest subscribers, then grow. Watch two numbers in your service’s report: bounces and complaints. Complaints should stay under one per thousand emails. If they’re higher, stop and ask yourself: did these people really ask for my emails? Is what I send useful to them? Next lesson: what to write next so people look forward to your emails.

Check yourself

1. What should he fix first?
   Correct answer: Make it a plain email, like from a person, signed with his name. A logo, banners and buttons make the email look like a company ad, so the inbox files it under Promotions. A plain email from a person reaches the main inbox more often.
2. How should he send the first email?
   Correct answer: Start with a small batch of the newest subscribers and grow day by day. A new domain has no reputation yet. A gradual start with fresh subscribers sends good signals: people open and reply, and the inbox starts to trust you.
3. What should he do?
   Correct answer: Make unsubscribe easy to find and email only people who signed up, about what he promised. 0.5% is five times Gmail’s target. People complain when they didn’t expect the emails or can’t get out. Easy unsubscribe and emailing only with consent remove both causes.
4. How should he end the first email?
   Correct answer: A question: “Reply in one word: what do you edit right now?”. A reply is the strongest plus for the inbox. And Misha learns what his subscribers edit, so he can write right to that.

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