Email deliverability with AI bots and new email filtering + calls and sms

[GabrielSkelly]

How do you increase email opens and deliverability with all of the new AI filters and bots?

We have been using Hubspot for 7 years and are starting to hit a wall. Even with previous best practices used we are seeing less delivers and more promotion or spam or dissapearing of emails happening. In google this can also impact your voice calls and sms.

What can we do to be effective at outbound marketing and sales with all of the new google and AI changes?

[MarianKaha · Accepted solution]

Hello @GabrielSkelly -

Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you mind providing some additional information? Specifically:

1. Are you referring to cold email outreach? Or marketing emails?
2. Which best practices do you routinely use that you referenced?

There was an excellent thread on marketing email deliverability here recently. In short, for marketing email:

• Make sure your authenticaton credentials are updated inline with Gmail and Yahoomail's domain authentication standards released last year.
• Hygiene and cleanliness of contact list - no scraped email lists, only emailing engaged contacts
• Use opt-in/opt-out campaigns to re-engage or remove contacts and let folks update email subscriptions
• Provide the abillty for subscribers to set preferences - Let subscribers choose what they want to hear about and how often.
• Subject line/preview text: here there needs to be a direct connection between what’s promised in that copy and what they’ll actually find inside the email. Be clear, actionable, and transparent—use personalization and smart content when possible to build trust and increase relevance. Use A/B testing if possible to evaluate and improve open rates.
•  Segmentation - Segment your audience so you’re sending the right message to the right people at the right time.

[pashairshad · Accepted solution]

Hey there,

To tack on to the point below:

1. Are you referencing Outbound (i.e., Sequences - one to one) or Marketing emails (one to many) where you're seeing spam issues? 

2. If you are referencing Marketing emails, is your company running cold Outbound? If so, are they running that on your main domain (www.test.com) or a subdomain (sales.test.com)? Or have they purchased multiple domains, warmed them up, and are running through something like SmartLead AI?
This is crucial because I've seen harmful cold outbound email programs impact marketing's emails – it's vital to protect your primary domain. 

If you are running Cold Outbound, see below from an SOP we've built for best practices:

1. Purchase Multiple Domains: When purchasing multiple domains, ensure they are relevant to your primary brand or the theme of your outreach. They should not appear spammy. Also, consider having a mix of TLDs (.com, .net, .co, etc.).
2. Warm Up New Domains: Before you start sending bulk emails, you'll want to "warm-up" new domains. This process involves gradually increasing the number of emails you send over time, so email providers don't flag them as spam.
3. Use Separate IP Addresses: If possible, use separate IP addresses for each domain to avoid cross-contamination of deliverability issues.
4. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Records: Ensure that you set up your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records correctly. These email authentication methods can help improve deliverability.
5. Content: Ensure you're using something like the JMM (Justin Michael Method) and not sending walls of text. Also, try to ensure you have relevancy. 
   
   For Marketing email – they other tool I'd recommend is GlockApps – this will allow you to check if DKIM, DMARC and SPF are setup correctly and send marketing emails to test inboxes to see where you are landing (in the inbox vs tabs), if it's going to spam and what's happening/why.
   
   Will give you a lot of clarity. Also check your Email Health Dashboard in HubSpot - if it's below five I'd recommend running an email health repair plan. 
   
   https://knowledge.hubspot.com/marketing-email/improve-your-email-sending-reputation-with-a-repair-pl...

[GabrielSkelly]

We do all of those 😃

We have some reps that do some cold outreach as well as account support/renewals so it can be a mix. 

We have see google specifically block or send emails to the promotions tab. If this happens google will also seem to flag outboud HS calls as spam and send directly to voicemail.

[MarianKaha]

@GabrielSkelly -

Please see @pashairshad 's reply above. It has a lot of technical recommendations that could very well help you out.

While I'm not as familiar with sequences/one-to-one, I found this incredibly informative post from HubSpot's @AmaraEllis  on email deliverability from last year after Gmail and Yahoo updated their policies. Please give it a read through, in particular this section where she mentions HubSpot cannot track Gmail SPAM reports (privacy issue), and recommends signing up for Google's Postmaster tools (GPT), where Google provides "insight into your spam rates, domain reputation, delivery errors, and more."

Since you mentioned you are doing outbound prospecting to cold contacts via 1-on-1, I encourage you to still include an unsubscribe link if you aren't already doing so.

I'm hoping with GPT + @pashairshad 's recommendations, you may be able to discover more of what's going on so you can diagnose and remedy.

With all of that being said, I have had valid emails come through to my SPAM unfortunately, it is frustrating. I've also had valid emails come to the wrong tabs and my understanding is following all best practices will usually get you in the inbox, but not always which of course is frustrating.

Finally, on the calling issue, I found this help article: Preventing cold calls from being marked as spam? Are you saying Google (Android phones) are flagging calls as SPAM? Thanks for clarifying.

[MarianKaha · Accepted solution]

Hello @GabrielSkelly -

Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you mind providing some additional information? Specifically:

1. Are you referring to cold email outreach? Or marketing emails?
2. Which best practices do you routinely use that you referenced?

There was an excellent thread on marketing email deliverability here recently. In short, for marketing email:

• Make sure your authenticaton credentials are updated inline with Gmail and Yahoomail's domain authentication standards released last year.
• Hygiene and cleanliness of contact list - no scraped email lists, only emailing engaged contacts
• Use opt-in/opt-out campaigns to re-engage or remove contacts and let folks update email subscriptions
• Provide the abillty for subscribers to set preferences - Let subscribers choose what they want to hear about and how often.
• Subject line/preview text: here there needs to be a direct connection between what’s promised in that copy and what they’ll actually find inside the email. Be clear, actionable, and transparent—use personalization and smart content when possible to build trust and increase relevance. Use A/B testing if possible to evaluate and improve open rates.
•  Segmentation - Segment your audience so you’re sending the right message to the right people at the right time.