The Result!
Follow along for just how you can do it too!
Table of contents
Meet Jason Pulliam
- Jason Pulliam is F-CMO for B2B companies and has a focus on RevOps.
- Leveraging ENTREPRENEURIAL OPERATING SYSTEM® to drive measurable results.
- He founded and runs a marketing agency for the last 10 years that leverages Facebook, LinkedIn Ads, heavy automations and cold email outreach to achieve client goals.
- Passionate about the importance of email deliverability in driving successful marketing campaigns.
- Developed InboxAssure to automate deliverability testing and optimization, ensuring emails reach their intended recipients.
Multiple Email Validations Cut Bounce Rate
I like Zerobounce as it provides a PDF with an overview of results and for extra credit will give you activity of the Last known activity period - Checks for activity in the last 30, 60, 90, 180, 365, or 365+ days, helpful if you want to get an idea of how 'active' your email list might be.
Optional: Catch-All Validation
For Small Total Addressable Markets
Small TAM Challenge
When dealing with a small Total Addressable Market, every contact counts
Connect To Tools
You can connect your Zero Bounce or other verifier to Scrubby and it will clean your list and then only verify the catch-alls
Quality Over Quantity
Focus on list quality becomes even more critical with limited market size
Step 1: Domain Authentication
Visit emailguard.io
Start by navigating to emailguard.io, a trusted platform for email authentication and security. (Glock Apps, MailReach are others in the marketplace if you want to a/b test)
Connect and Verify Domains
Follow the platform's instructions to connect and verify your domains. This step establishes your ownership and legitimacy.
Confirm Configuration
Ensure proper setup of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM protocols. These authentication methods are crucial for proving your emails' authenticity to receiving servers.
Write Better PS and Subject Lines
Subject Lines
Spintax
PS Lines
note: GPT still likes to ignore system instructions, so sometimes tell it to review the instructions.
How To Write Great Copy
Everything I have learned is from Aaron Fletcher of Growthworks and Mario and Luke from CopyCoders.ai
FAQ
Many things you can isolate. Low reply rates often indicate deliverability issues, poor inbox placement, or content that isn't resonating with your audience. Check you bounce rate for each inbox, it should be below 1%.
A healthy reply rate should be above 1% just from out-of-office responses alone. If you're seeing less than this, you likely have deliverability issues to address.
Focus on inbox placement, clean email lists through validation, authenticate your domains, and optimize your content. Testing your emails for spam triggers before sending can also help significantly.
Sudden spikes in bounce rates often indicate you are sending to an SEG (Barracuda, Proofpoint, etc) and your message was tagged as spam and now ALL your messages that use that same SEG will bounce even if you have never sent to them with the same sending domain.
If you are using EmailGuard, it will wait up to 12hrs for your email to land in the inbox, but typically it's a fast process depending on the number of inboxes. If you see that some test never start or never complete, 99% of the time it means your emails are worse than spam, they are bouncing before they get to the placement test. With InboxAsssure our testing shows a '000' code letting you know the test failed. With EmailGuard UI, you will need to watch for inbox placement test that are still waiting to finish and never do.
With inbox placement testing, you can rest them and see if they recover between 2-10 days. After 10 days of going to spam or still bouncing, it's likely they won't recover. Be sure you use EmailGuard or similar to check all blacklist as some are easily removed with a free submission.
No, it’s generally a bad idea. SEGs operate at the domain level, meaning if your email is flagged as spam by just one recipient, the entire system can block your messages across all users of that SEG—even if you’ve never emailed them before.
The risk increases significantly if you send to multiple people at the same company. Once one recipient marks your email as spam, your sender reputation can tank across the entire domain, leading to widespread deliverability issues.
If you must reach out to a company using an SEG, it’s best to:
• Use a highly personalized approach to avoid looking like mass outreach.
• Limit sends to a single person per domain.
Domain authentication is crucial for email deliverability. Properly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records significantly improve your chances of reaching the inbox. Without these authentications, many email providers will automatically flag your messages as suspicious or route them to spam folders.
Most email sequencers like Bison, Instantly, and SmartLead allow you to test a single campaign and set of inboxes. To determine whether your sender reputation or email copy is the issue, follow these steps:
1. Run a test campaign using a single set of sending emails (all from the same provider—e.g., all Maildoso or all CheapInboxes).
2. Rotate out the copy by sending a neutral, transactional-style email, such as a mock appointment reminder or a simple one-liner like:
“See you next week! – Jason”
3. Compare results—if deliverability improves with the neutral email but not with your sales copy, then your copy is likely the issue.
By isolating variables, you can pinpoint whether the problem is your email content or the reputation of your sending addresses.Start
Yes! Using EmailGuard, you can upload all your domains and then it will monitor if your inbox provider accidentally changes your DNS settings. If the settings are wrong, contact your inbox provider to have them fix it. Your bounce rate will be very high if they records are invalid.
Validate your email list before every major campaign and at least once every 3 months for regular sending. For high-volume senders, monthly validation is recommended. Using multiple validation services can help catch different types of invalid emails and reduce bounce rates more effectively.
NO! each email sequencer company has different ways they report bounces. There is not a programmatic way to track ALL bounces except with EmailBison sequencer which provides it via API. Check the 'other' tab inside Instantly inbox will at least show you if there are bounces that are not associated with any campaign (aka, warm up bounces)
Learn how to get: 109% improvement in reply rate with the same set of contacts with 2 simple changes