Invental · Cold Email

Cold Email Deliverability Checklist

Use it to grade your setup — or the agency you're about to hire. If you can't tick most of these, your email is probably landing in spam, not the inbox. Tick as you go; your score is at the bottom.

1 · Domains & identity

Cold email sends from separate domains — never your main company domain. Sending domains were aged before use (not bought and blasted the same week). SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up and passing on every sending domain.

2 · Warm-up & volume

Each new domain / inbox was warmed ~21 days before real sends. Volume ramps gradually — hundreds, not thousands, in week one. Spare domains are warming in the background and rotated before performance dips.

3 · List & targeting

Contacts match a specific ICP (right titles, companies) — not a bought bulk list. Data is fresh, not a database resold to everyone. Every list is verified (twice) before sending; bounce rate kept low (~under 3%).

4 · The message

First email is plain text — no logos, images or heavy HTML. No links in the first touch. Under ~50 words — one observation, one ask; reads like a person wrote it. Follow-ups add a new angle — never "just bumping this".

5 · Monitoring

Open & reply rates are tracked; a drop triggers a check, not a shrug. Someone owns deliverability month to month — it degrades if left alone.

Score your ticks

13–15 — solid. Your setup (or your vendor's) is doing the invisible work right.
8–12 — leaking replies somewhere. Fixable, but you're leaving meetings on the table.
Under 8 — you're mostly landing in spam. The copy isn't the problem; the setup is.

Want this handled for you — domains, list and messaging, kept landing month after month?

Request a custom outbound plan ↗