External SMTP for Cold Emails – Can It Improve My Deliverability?

A cold email is an email sent to a potential lead without any prior contact or consent from them. Unlike spam, cold emails are

  1. sent to a targeted group of people who may be interested in the product/service being offered and are
  2. personalized with info that makes them relevant to the lead

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used for sending and receiving mail. Recently, External SMTP services (Email Service Providers) such as Mailgun, Sendgrid and AWS SES have become popular. Instead of using and maintaining your own server & IP reputation, you can integrate these APIs: they provide a pool of IP addresses to deliver your mail.

While sending cold emails, it is important that your emails are delivered to the lead’s inbox, and not their spam folder.

Deliverability depends on many factors like the domain and IP reputation, the words used in it, the signature of the sender, the receiver of the email, and the prompt label on it. To increase the deliverability rate, you must also check if they are sending the mail according to the email service provider’s limits. If the emails sent exceed the daily limit given by the email service provider then there is a risk of being marked as spam or end up being blocked.

The content of the email also plays a significant role in deliverability, if there are fewer words and more images and links, it alarms spam filters. Better personalization of cold emails improves deliverability. If you are trying tracking links i.e. if the customer opens links it first gets to the tracking address and then redirects immediately, by doing this the targeted business customer may get distracted or baffled. This also influences the deliverability rate of the cold email that one sends.

By using External SMTP for sending cold emails, you can choose to have a unique dedicated IP address assigned only for one’s sole purpose. They also provide higher limits than the usual email providers. You can also have the choice of choosing an IP address with a good reputation. Usually, if one uses Gmail for sending mail, the SMTP provides a random IP address to deliver or receive the messages. And this IP address may or may not have a good reputation. If the reputation of the IP address through which you are delivering a message is not so good, it may directly lead it to the spam box.

But, one cannot say that it can surely improve the deliverability of the cold email. Having an External SMTP with a well reputed IP address cannot help, if the targeted business person is not the appropriate prospect for the task or if the email doesn’t identify who you are, or if the email is not labeled as such i.e. if the email that you sent is an ad but it is not labeled as an ad or if the mails are sent frequently even if they opt-out or if there isn’t any option to not receive the marketer’s emails.

Finally, using External SMTP for cold emails, may not surely provide one with higher deliverability rates but if the cold email sent by the marketer is good then the deliverability chances are greater.

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