Deliverability can make or break your email marketing efforts, and few people know this better than Dame Bizimoski, Email Deliverability Associate at Senders. With years of experience in helping businesses optimize their email infrastructure and avoid the dreaded spam folder, Dame specializes in strategies ensuring emails reach the right inbox at the right time.
In this interview with Stripo, Dame shares his expert insights on the most common deliverability mistakes, the key factors affecting inbox placement, and how businesses can futureproof their email strategies. He also dives into the latest trends in cold email outreach and the essential infrastructure every brand should have in place.
Expert
Dame Bizimoski is a seasoned email deliverability associate engaged in helping businesses optimize their email deliverability and engagement rates. Drawing on years of hands-on experience, Dame develops customized strategies tailored to each client’s unique goals, ensuring that their emails land in the inbox rather than the spam folder. His expertise spans email infrastructure, cold email scaling, and sendability, allowing companies to maximize their outreach without compromising deliverability.
At Senders, Dame supports over 60 venture-backed companies with their email infrastructure, establishing smooth and efficient email-sending processes that prioritize deliverability. In other words, Dame is the guy making sure every email lands exactly where it should. Be it troubleshooting deliverability issues, enhancing email hygiene, or crafting data-driven strategies, Dame’s expertise makes him an invaluable resource for any company pursuing email marketing success.
Cold emails: How to benefit from this strategy
Stripo: Your career has been centered on email deliverability and outbound strategy. What initially attracted you to email marketing, particularly cold email, and what keeps you passionate about it?
Dame: Sure! Email deliverability found me — I wasn’t actively looking for it. I used to work for an email marketing platform called Mailvio, which is similar to Mailchimp and other such platforms. Over time, I became more involved in helping people achieve their email success, and now I primarily work with cold email strategies.
S: You often emphasize “safe and compliant” cold emails. How do you define the essence of a cold email, and who benefits the most from this strategy in today’s marketing and sales environment?
D: When it comes to compliance, cold emailing can be tricky. The key to safety lies in two main factors:
- The offer — it needs to be relevant and valuable to the recipient.
- The audience — the email must be sent to the right people.
Technically, compliance involves providing an unsubscribe link (and honoring it), avoiding misleading subject lines, and including a physical address in the email — these are must-haves for CAN-SPAM compliance. However, targeting is the most crucial factor. If you present a well-crafted offer to the right audience, your chances of success will increase significantly.
S: Could you share an example of an impactful cold email?
D: I don’t have a standout example because what works for one client might not work for another. Instead of looking for one “magic” email, you must focus on a strategy that drives responses.
The best way to achieve this is by having:
- an irresistible offer;
- a compelling lead magnet.
A strong offer alone isn’t always enough; sometimes you need a lead magnet to encourage replies.
S: So cold emailing isn’t just about volume?
D: Exactly. It’s a combination of volume and precision. Sending a high volume of poorly targeted emails won’t work. You need to strike a balance — enough volume to reach prospects, along with accurate targeting to ensure relevance.
S: What’s your take on hyper-personalization in cold emails?
D: Typically, we don’t use hyper-personalization. Although it sounds great in theory, it’s not scalable.
We compared the performances of personalized and non-personalized emails sent by our higher-volume senders to find no significant difference between the two. This is why I think hyper-personalization, or any personalization, is not important. What truly matters is offer-based personalization — ensuring that your offer aligns with the recipient’s needs.
S: Have you encountered skepticism about the effectiveness of cold emails?
Absolutely. Cold emailing is not the right strategy for every business. Some clients are better off focusing on other lead-generation channels, such as LinkedIn outreach, paid ads, or inbound marketing. Moreover, even when cold email works well, it should always be part of a broader multichannel strategy.
Dame Bizimoski,
Email Deliverability Associate at Senders.
S: Senders runs outbound infrastructure for over 60 companies. What’s a common mistake businesses make when scaling cold email campaigns, and how can they fix it?
D: One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not paying attention to their social presence. Many companies fail at cold email outreach because they do not have visible credibility. If you don’t have a proper LinkedIn page or a blog, it creates skepticism. It’s not just about SEO or branding — it’s about trust. When someone receives your email and looks you up, they should find a legitimate online presence. Some companies may find themselves in even worse situations — they may have a social presence, but it’s negative. This kind of reputation can completely ruin cold outreach efforts.
S: If we consider past, present, and future cold email trends, what’s the most significant shift you’ve observed in recent years, and where do you see cold email heading with the rise of AI tools?
D: A major shift occurred last year when Google intensified its filtering and blocking mechanisms. As a deliverability expert, I’d abuse fresh domains less. Many businesses rush to buy new domains and then use them immediately to send emails without properly warming them up. The problem here is that this process mimics what spammers have been doing for years. Some services offer instant domain setups and warm-ups, allowing immediate mass sending.
This behavior hurts legitimate cold emailers by replicating spammer tactics, triggering more aggressive filtering by inbox providers. Companies must be patient with new domains and focus on proper warm-up strategies to maintain credibility and deliverability.
S: How will the future of cold emails change, and what will be the focus?
D: The future of cold email is uncertain — it largely depends on what Google and Microsoft will introduce in the coming years. While cold email will always exist, its effectiveness, especially at high volumes, is unclear, particularly with the rise of AI tools.
AI is already diminishing the need for hyper-personalization, with recipients recognizing that many businesses use automation to create personalized messages. As a result, hyper-personalization may lose its impact. Instead of relying on AI-driven personalization, the best approach will be to focus on curating highly targeted email lists that align with the message being sent.
Email marketing metrics: What should you measure?
S: Many marketers track open rates. How important are they to cold email campaigns?
D: We don’t focus on open rates for cold emails. They are among the most useless benchmarks used today because they are often inaccurate. Open rates have always been unreliable, but even more so now because they:
- inflated numbers when clients automatically open emails;
- fake unopens when recipients open an email but its images don’t load, due to which the tracking pixel doesn’t register the open.
Instead, we focus on replies, maintaining average response rates between 1% and 3%, and the unsubscribe metric. For instance, if you end up with a lot of unsubscribes from a particular email, it means something needs to be changed.
S: Which key metrics and KPIs — deliverability rates, open rates, response rates, or click-through rates — do you track for cold emailing? How do they inform and improve your future campaigns?
D: As I mentioned, the best indicators of a successful email campaign are the reply and unsubscribe rates. We don’t usually focus on click-throughs or click rates because tracking clicks can negatively impact deliverability. However, if you have to track clicks, we recommend using UTM parameters. With UTMs, you can track clicks without harming deliverability.
We always prioritize replies — our messaging is designed to encourage a response rather than just getting someone to click a link and book a call. The most important thing that we focus on is maintaining response rates between 1% and 3%.
If response rates fall below this metric, we analyze the key factors — targeting, email copy, and CTAs — and ensure that everything is clear, clean, and optimized to improve future campaigns.
S: Given the trends in machine learning and global metrics, what changes do you foresee in email marketing?
D: The biggest shift I anticipate is email copy burning out more quickly than the domains themselves. This has always been the case — I’ve never encountered a domain being permanently burned. Instead, it’s usually the email copy and the contact list itself that get exhausted before the domain does.
Unfortunately, many still treat engagement rate as a secondary metric when, in reality, it should be the primary focus. Engagement should be considered the main metric that matters, as opposed to open rates or other superficial indicators.
Dame Bizimoski,
Email Deliverability Associate at Senders.
S: With spam filters becoming increasingly aggressive and AI changing email customization, what key deliverability pitfalls should businesses avoid when scaling cold emails?
D: A major mistake is inadequate split testing. Businesses should continuously run at least three email split tests. If you start with three variations and one performs best, create two new versions based on the winner and keep iterating. This process ensures that campaigns remain effective and doesn’t become outdated.
S: How can businesses use value-driven messaging to achieve their sales goals without relying on hard selling?
D: At Senders, we focus on running webinar campaigns instead of just promoting our services outright. This helps us attract more engaged and interested leads who are genuinely ready to buy from us, instead of having to promote our offerings. Another effective approach is to provide value — whether through webinars, checklists, or other lead magnets — before making the sale. This strategy helps build trust and long-term relationships, as opposed to running the risk of losing a lead through an aggressive sales pitch.
Key insights on email deliverability and compliance strategies
S: Sender reputation can make or break email deliverability. What are the newest methods for monitoring and improving it?
D: It depends on who you are. If you are a regular email marketer — by which I mean someone who doesn’t have their own ESP — you can monitor deliverability in a couple of ways. The best tool available, for lack of a better one, is Google’s Postmaster. Unfortunately, Office 365 does not offer a similar tool. They do have SMDS, but it is primarily meant for users with dedicated IPs.
I wouldn’t recommend using a dedicated IP unless you have someone on your team who understands how to warm it up, monitor it, and handle it properly. A dedicated IP can do more harm than good if not managed correctly. That said, Postmaster is a great tool to use for this purpose.
Moreover, occasionally checking your domain for blacklists can also be useful, but it’s not strictly necessary unless you notice a drop in engagement.
S: What elements of an email can affect deliverability?
D: While many factors affect deliverability, the most crucial is how recipients engage with your emails. One of the most overlooked aspects is segmenting and engaging with your audience.
From a technical standpoint, elements such as GIFs and multiple links can impact deliverability. It is generally recommended that an email include no more than three links. If you use GIFs or images, ensure that their file sizes are small — ideally below 100 KB or, even better, below 50 KB.
Tracking links may also negatively impact deliverability. If you’re using tracking, it’s best to use UTM parameters rather than platform-based link tracking. If UTM parameters aren’t an option, customize your tracking links to match the domain of your sender email.
Google and Yahoo’s new sender requirements
S: Early in 2024, Google and Yahoo introduced new email sender requirements. Based on industry reports, what impact have these new requirements had on deliverability?
D: While new sender requirements have indeed been introduced, they aren’t necessarily new concepts. For example, maintaining a spam complaint rate below 0.3% has always been a best practice, but in reality, even a continuous rate of 0.1% can lead to deliverability issues over time.
The key solution is to identify why recipients mark emails as spam. Typically, it’s due to a lack of engagement or insufficient value in the content. Senders need to focus on building engagement rather than simply following technical guidelines.
S: What should email marketers do if they haven’t complied with these new requirements?
D: The first step is to review your technical setup and make sure everything aligns perfectly. A critical step is enabling DMARC, along with proper reporting. DMARC has two key tags — RUA (aggregate reports) and RUF (forensic reports) — that need to be configured to receive the performance reports of an email domain.
Also, I do not recommend receiving these reports in your inbox. Instead, use services such as Postmark DMARC (free) or DMARCian (free, up to a certain level). These tools send reports every Monday, providing valuable insights, such as how many emails passed SPF and DKIM checks and which sources are sending emails on your behalf.
(Source: Postmark DMARC)
By monitoring these reports, you can detect potential issues and take corrective action before they impact your deliverability. Examples of such issues include when someone abuses your domain or if you have a marketing platform or a transactional email system that is not properly aligned. These situations can give rise to problems with specific platforms.
Therefore, the first step to address this is to set up DMARC with proper reporting.
S: New rules (and noncompliance with them) often impact the open rate and deliverability of emails. Has the overall OR of emails fallen or increased compared to “before the rules” time? Please share your observations.
D: Open rates have not been accurate for a while, and recent changes have affected them even further. Gmail, for example, no longer loads images automatically when someone opens an email. In some cases, Gmail may also flag emails as suspicious, particularly if there has been a recent spike in spam complaints. Since open tracking relies on image pixels, if images are not loaded, an email will not be registered as opened, even if it has been read.
Instead of focusing on open rates, other key metrics, such as clicks and replies, must be prioritized. An open rate alone does not indicate engagement — what matters is whether the recipient interacts with the email. Unless an email is compelling, it merely reaching the inbox won’t drive meaningful action. Prioritize engagement by encouraging clicks or, even better, replies.
Another crucial metric you should monitor is the unsubscribe rate. A spike in unsubscribes often precedes an increase in spam complaints. If you notice such a rising trend, it could imply a problem with your email content or targeting. Therefore, since open tracking is not a reliable metric, focusing on engagement-driven indicators is a more effective approach.
S: The new requirements involve some changes regarding deliverability. For example, if one marketer’s email campaign is noncompliant, will the performance reduction and further sanctions affect the current campaign or the entire domain?
D: Regarding deliverability and compliance, the impact of a single noncompliant campaign depends on its scale and audience engagement. One poorly executed campaign is unlikely to cause major issues if it targets an engaged list. However, consistently sending noncompliant emails over an extended period, such as a month, can harm deliverability and domain reputation.
To ensure compliance, maintaining a well-engaged list and delivering high-quality content that recipients want to read are essential. If you are concerned about compliance, checking the new Postmaster version can help determine whether your domain meets the necessary standards or requires adjustments.
For regular tracking, you must verify whether your domain and email system are compliant. Most modern email-sending platforms comply with the latest requirements, barring newer updates such as the mandatory one-click unsubscribe feature.
Wrapping up
We are incredibly grateful to Dame Bizimoski for sharing his knowledge and experiences with us. Here are the key takeaways from this interview:
- Deliverability is all about infrastructure — setting up proper authentication protocols and maintaining a clean sending reputation is key to avoiding the spam folder.
- Cold email success depends on hygiene — keeping email lists well-organized, warming up new domains, and monitoring engagement metrics help businesses scale outbound email without harming deliverability.
- Engagement and reply rates should be the primary focus — these metrics help ensure that your email marketing strategy is working.
- Strategy matters as much as technology — sending frequency, content quality, and adherence to best practices can make or break your email performance.
- The email landscape is always evolving — staying updated on trends and adapting your approach ensures long-term inbox placement and engagement.
By paying attention to these key areas, businesses can improve their email deliverability, reach their audiences effectively, and maximize the impact of their email marketing efforts.
