Protect Your Business Email Reputation: Deliverability Basics I Learnt the Hard Way

I killed my company's domain reputation once - and I know you probably have too. It's all right we are all allowed one pass.

It happened at Jaryah when we started sending cold emails from our primary domain. I didn;t notice for a few days that our team emails disappeared, client communications vanished into spam folders, and invoices never reached recipients. We had unknowingly poisoned our own well.

So in my usual fashion, I aggressively pursued a learning moment and jumped straight into the rabbit hole of the world of email deliverability. Not the surface-level "best practices", but the technical infrastructure and trust mechanisms that determine whether your message reaches someone or effectively ceases to exist.

What I discovered was both fascinating and surprisingly straightforward once you understand the underlying principles. Let me break this down so you don't repeat my mistake.

‍

What Most People Miss

There's a fundamental difference between your sending domain and your From email that most business owners never grasp until it's too late.

When you send an email, recipients see a From address like yourname@company.com. But underneath, your email includes technical signatures that use domain authentication to verify legitimacy. These signatures can use any domain you control - it doesn't have to match what appears in the From field.

This distinction creates a powerful opportunity: you can send emails that appear to come from yourname@company.com while using separate domains to handle the technical authentication aspects.

Why does this matter? Because email providers like Gmail and Outlook build reputation profiles at the domain level. Every bounce, spam complaint, and ignored email affects your domain's standing. If you use company.com for everything, marketing mistakes can cripple your entire business communication infrastructure.

‍

The Multi-Domain Strategy I Now Use

After rebuilding our reputation from scratch, I implemented a domain separation strategy that I now consider mandatory for any serious business:

1. Primary Domain (jaryah.com): Reserved exclusively for person-to-person communication, operational emails, and business-critical functions. This domain never sends bulk email.
2. Marketing Domain (jaryah-updates.com): Handles newsletters and communications to existing customers or warm leads who have previously engaged with us.
3. Outreach Domain (jaryah-mail.com): Used solely for cold outreach and prospecting, isolating the highest-risk activity to a disposable domain.

The beauty of this approach is that recipients still see emails from atif@jaryah.com in their inbox. The sending infrastructure uses dedicated domains behind the scenes, but the visible From address maintains brand consistency.

If an outreach campaign triggers spam filters (always a risk with cold email), only the dedicated outreach domain suffers. We simply replace it and continue operations without affecting our primary communications.

‍

Email Warming

Email providers are suspicious by design. Send too many emails too quickly from a new domain, and you'll trigger instant spam filtering.

The most effective approach I've found is methodical and patient:

1. Start by sending just 50-100 emails daily to your most engaged contacts - people who regularly open and interact with your messages.
2. Increase volume by 10-20% weekly if engagement metrics remain stable.
3. Use dedicated warming services for domains handling SMTP-only sending (more technical, but critical for certain setups).

This isn't just theory - we've measured dramatic differences in inbox placement rates between properly warmed domains and those that start sending at full volume immediately.

Manually warming domains is tedious. I use Warmup Inbox to automate this process - it sends emails to a closed network of accounts that interact with your messages, gradually building your domain reputation without requiring your constant attention.

Warmup Inbox has been particularly effective for our SMTP-only setups like those in GoHighLevel. If you want to try it, you can use my affiliate link here. I wouldn't recommend it if we didn't use it for all our customers.

‍

Segmentation Preserves Reputation

Once your domains are established, maintaining reputation requires discipline around who receives your emails. I use this simple but effective segmentation:

1. 30-Day Engaged: Contacts who have opened or clicked within the last month
2. 90-Day Engaged: Contacts who have engaged within the last quarter
3. Unengaged: People who haven't interacted in over 90 days

This segmentation lets you communicate differently with each group. Engaged contacts can receive more frequent communication with minimal risk, while unengaged contacts require caution.

The counterintuitive truth is that removing unengaged contacts often improves overall results. Each inactive contact silently damages your sender reputation with every ignored email.

‍

DNS Settings! Sorry

This is the part where you just listen to what I say and trust me. The technical details of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC implementation can be overwhelming if you're not an email specialist.

If you use Google, Outlook or anything common, follow this article from Lemlist - it breaks down the exact records to add to your DNS settings. Just add what they tell you and don't overthink it. The article walks through each step with clear instructions that even non-technical users can follow.

Lemlist also offers warming services, but I've found Warmup Inbox more cost-effective and flexible. What makes it stand out is the ability to control the content being sent by adding your own templates or using AI to generate contextually relevant messages. This matters because modern spam algorithms look for context-appropriate content, not just engagement metrics.

For those who want to understand what these protocols actually do:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Lists servers authorized to send email on your behalf
2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds digital signatures verifying authenticity
3. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication): Tells receiving servers how to handle authentication failures

Without these protocols properly implemented, you're starting with a significant disadvantage that no content quality can overcome.

‍

Real-World Impact

We've implemented these exact principles with numerous clients facing deliverability challenges. The results speak for themselves.

GrowStackDrive.com initially struggled with abysmal open rates of just 4.37% despite high delivery rates. This is the classic symptom of inbox placement issues - emails are technically "delivered" but landing straight in spam folders.

After implementing our basic domain separation and authentication protocols, their open rates jumped to 43.93% - a 10x improvement with the same email content. When we implemented the advanced setup with separate domains for different audience segments, their engagement climbed even higher, reaching 63.52% open rates.

Similarly, RemoteCleanAcademy.com started with open rates of just 11.6%, meaning nearly 90% of their audience never saw their messages.

After implementing our basic domain setup, their open rates increased to 44.16%. With the complete advanced implementation, they achieved a consistent 58% open rate - a 5x improvement that directly translated to better customer relationships and increased revenue.

These aren't cherry-picked examples. We've replicated these results consistently across different industries and email volumes. The principles work because they align with how email infrastructure actually functions, not because of any tricks or hacks.

If you'd like me to help you directly with your emails, you can always reach out to me here.