Email Deliverability Best Practice

How to Make Sure Your Emails Land in the Inbox

We’ve updated your account’s sending configuration to align with your verified sending domain. This protects your domain reputation and improves long-term inbox placement.

Below are the most important best practices to follow when sending emails from your account.

1. Proper Domain Authentication (Handled for You)

Your sending domain (usually @replies.yourdomain.com) is configured with its own DNS records, including:

  • SPF
  • DKIM
  • DMARC

This allows for proper alignment between your “From” address (more on this later) and verified sending domain. This ensures email providers recognize your messages as legitimate and authorized.

2. Use the Correct “From” Email for Bulk Sends (Very Important)

When sending bulk emails, you must use the custom value:

{{custom_values.from_email}}

This ensures your email is sent from your properly authenticated domain (for example:

you@replies.yourgym.com) — not a free email provider like Gmail or Yahoo.

Why this matters:

  • Free domains (gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com) will hurt deliverability.
  • Domain-based sending aligns with your authentication setup.
  • Proper alignment protects your sender reputation.

If you’re sending a bulk email and manually typing a Gmail address into the “From” field, inbox placement will suffer.

Always use {{custom_values.from_email}} as the from email for bulk emails which will use the provided domain-based sender.


To find the email being used go Settings -> Custom Values -> From Email. You are free to edit everything in front of the '@' symbol. Everything after that must remain the same to maintain alignment with the domain that is used to send mail through the system.


The domain your account uses to send mail can be found under Settings -> Email Services

3. Filter Your Audience Correctly for Bulk Campaigns

When sending bulk emails, list hygiene is critical.

✅ If Sending from Contacts → Smartlists

The system will automatically prevent sending to:

  • Invalid emails
  • Unsubscribed contacts

No additional filtering is required.

⚠ If Sending from Marketing → Emails → Campaigns

You must send to a properly built Smart List.

Your Smart List should exclude:

  • Contacts marked as Invalid Email
  • Contacts marked as Unsubscribed
  • Contacts marked as DND

If you send a campaign to an unfiltered list, you risk:

  • Higher bounce rates
  • Spam complaints
  • Damaged domain reputation

If you're unsure how to build a compliant Smart List, please check out Tip of the Week #84: How to Create a Clean Email List in Gym Lead Machine


For more information on how to send a bulk email through these two different options, review this article here.

4. Warm Up New Sending Domains

If your sending domain is new or recently updated:

  • Start with 20–30 emails per day
  • Gradually increase volume over 2–3 weeks
  • Send to recently engaged contacts first

Avoid large campaign blasts immediately after setup.

5. Maintain Clean Contact Lists

Healthy lists improve deliverability.

We recommend:

  • Removing contacts who haven’t opened emails in 90–180 days
  • Suppressing hard bounces immediately
    • See the "Bonus Step" here
  • Avoiding sending to role-based emails (info@, admin@, support@)
  • Never uploading purchased or scraped lists

Inactive or low-quality contacts damage the sender's reputation.


To clean up some obvious invalid emails, review Tip of the Week #14- How to Find & Correct Invalid Emails

6. Use Deliverability-Friendly Formatting

Simple emails perform best.

Best practices:

  • Use mostly plain text or light formatting
  • Include 1–2 links maximum
  • Send emails in batches instead of all at once (i.e. 200 emails every 10-15 minutes)
  • Avoid image-only emails
  • Avoid URL shorteners
  • Avoid excessive capitalization or multiple exclamation points
  • Keep images minimal
  • Keep it conversational - conversational emails outperform heavily designed newsletters.

For more info on points 4, 5, and 6, you can review Tip of the Week #42- How to Keep Your Emails Out of the Spam Folder

7. Encourage Replies & Engagement

Email providers prioritize engagement.

To improve inbox placement:

  • Send to engaged contacts first
  • Remove consistent non-openers from repeated campaigns
  • Ask simple questions that encourage replies
  • Include an text that lets them know you've sent them an email and asks them to check their other folders and reply to it so you know they got it
    • Example text: Hi {{contact.first_name}} this is {{user.first_name}} from {{location.name}}. We just sent over an email with some important details. Please keep an eye out for it and be sure to check your spam, promotions and other folders for it. If you see it in a folder other than your main inbox, move it to your primary folder and send us a quick reply! That helps future info from us make it into your inbox. Thanks!

Replies significantly improve domain reputation.

8. Send Consistently

Avoid irregular sending patterns.

Instead:

  • Send weekly or biweekly
  • Maintain steady volume
  • Avoid sending nothing for weeks, then blasting thousands at once

Consistency builds trust with inbox providers.

Each marketing email should include:

  • A visible unsubscribe link
  • Your business name
  • Your physical mailing address

Unsubscribes are normal — spam complaints are not.


How to add an Unsubscribe Link

10. Monitor the Right Metrics

Watch:

  • Bounce rate (keep under 2%)
  • Spam complaint rate (keep under 0.1%)
  • Engagement trends like click rate and open rate

High bounce or complaint rates can quickly damage domain health.


These stats and trends can be monitored in GLM under Marketing -> Emails -> Statistics

Quick Bulk Send Checklist

Before sending a campaign:

✔ Using {{custom_values.from_email}}

✔ Sending from a domain-based address (not Gmail/Yahoo)

✔ Smart List excludes invalid, unsubscribed, and DND contacts

✔ Sending to engaged contacts first

✔ Email is simple and conversational


Deliverability is built over time through consistent, clean sending practices.


If you’d like help reviewing your Smart Lists or campaign setup, our team is happy to assist.