How I fixed my cold email reply rates
Been running cold email for my agency about 8 months. Reply rate dropped from 4.2% to under 1% last quarter. Was losing my mind.
Skipping the generic "warm up your domain" advice, here's what actually moved the needle:
Got off Google Workspace for sending. Moved to dedicated SMTP with separate sending domains. Bought 3 alt domains (.co and .net of my main).
Re-did SPF, DKIM, DMARC from scratch. Thought mine was set up right. It wasn't. MXToolbox showed me where it was broken.
Capped sends at 30/day per inbox for 3 weeks. Painful but necessary.
Cut all links and images from the first email. Plain text. Replies went up immediately.
Shortened everything. 50-70 words max. One question, one CTA.
Killed personalization tokens that looked obviously automated. {{first_name}}, you know the drill.
Back to 3.8% reply rate. Took about 6 weeks. Happy to answer Qs.