# Email deliverability: keep your Loops out of spam

How to authenticate your domain, warm up sending, keep your list clean, and read Loop's deliverability signals so your emails land in the inbox.

Deliverability comes down to four things: a properly authenticated sending domain, a list free of bad addresses, a warm-up pace that looks human to inbox providers, and watching reply rate — not send volume — as your real signal of health. Get these right and Loop's emails land in the inbox instead of spam.

## Why does deliverability matter more than the email itself

Every email Loop sends on your behalf goes out from a real inbox tied to your account. Inbox providers like Gmail track the reputation of that sending identity over time — how often it bounces, how often people mark it as spam, and how often people actually reply. A single bad batch (mistyped addresses, too much volume too fast) can tank that reputation for weeks. One bad send costs you more than ten good ones, because the damage isn't to that one email — it's to every email you send after it.

This guide covers the four levers you control: domain authentication, list hygiene, warm-up pacing, and the health signals to watch once you're live.

## How do I authenticate my sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

If you're sending from your own domain rather than a shared Loop address, the domain needs to prove to inbox providers that it's really you sending — not someone spoofing your name.

1. **SPF (Sender Policy Framework)** — a DNS TXT record on your domain that lists which mail servers are allowed to send on your behalf. Without it, receiving servers can't confirm the email came from an authorized source.
2. **DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)** — a cryptographic signature attached to each email, verified against a public key published in your DNS. It proves the message wasn't altered in transit and really originated from your domain.
3. **DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance)** — a policy record that tells inbox providers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails (quarantine, reject, or allow), and where to send reports about failures.

All three work together: SPF and DKIM each verify one thing, and DMARC ties them to a policy. Missing any of them makes your domain look unverified, which is one of the fastest ways to land in spam regardless of how good your copy is.

If you're not sure whether your domain has these set up, check with whoever manages your domain's DNS (your registrar or IT admin) before your first send. This is a one-time setup per domain — once it's in place, you don't need to touch it again unless you change domains or mail providers.

## How fast can I ramp up sending volume

A real person sending cold email by hand sends roughly 30-80 emails a day from one inbox. If your Loop suddenly sends hundreds or thousands in a single afternoon from a domain with no sending history, inbox providers read that as spam behavior — and they don't always tell you. Instead of a visible bounce, your emails just quietly land in spam. You'll see silence, not an error.

Loop enforces a **daily limit** on how many emails go out to any one person per day, tied to your plan tier. You can see and adjust your current daily cap from a loop's detail view, and raise it if your plan allows — but that cap governs sends to a single person, not your total volume. **You** control total volume by how large a batch of people you launch a loop against, and how fast you scale that up.

A conservative ramp for a domain with little or no sending history looks like this:

| Week | Suggested daily volume | Why                                        |
| ---- | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| 1    | 30-80                  | Look like a real sender to inbox providers |
| 2    | 80-200                 | Scale up once your reply rate holds steady |
| 3    | 200-500                | You're building sender trust               |
| 4+   | 500-1,000+             | Only if your bounce rate stays low         |

Two rules make this work:

- **Don't import a large list and launch a loop against all of it on day one.** Start with a smaller batch, watch how it lands, then expand.
- **Reply fast to every real response.** Inbox providers weigh engagement — how often people open, reply, and don't mark you as spam — heavily in their reputation scoring. Fast replies signal a real, engaged sender.

## How do I keep my list clean before I launch

Your list matters more than your copy. A list full of bad addresses will sink even a well-written email, because every bounce chips away at your sending reputation.

When you import people into Loop via CSV, the import flow checks each address and sorts it into one of three groups before you confirm the upload:

- **Clean** — passes every check, goes through as-is.
- **Typo** — the domain looks like a common misspelling of a major provider (for example, a `gmial.com` or `hotnail.com` variant). Loop suggests the corrected domain; you choose to accept the fix or drop the row.
- **Invalid** — blank, malformed, a disposable or role-based address (`admin@`, `noreply@`), a placeholder (`test@`, `sample@`), a typo top-level-domain (`.con`, `.cm`), or a known test domain (`example.com`). These are dropped before upload.

Beyond that automatic pass, a few habits catch what automated checks can miss:

1. Open your CSV in a spreadsheet before uploading and sort by domain. Anything that isn't a recognizable provider or company domain deserves a second look.
2. Spot-check at least 20 rows on any list someone else handed you — don't assume it's clean because it came from somewhere else.
3. Watch your bounce rate once you're sending. Loop reads a 7-day bounce rate off your account, and if it climbs above 3%, you'll see a warning on your **Dashboard** with a suggestion to audit your list. If it climbs high enough, Loop pauses outbound sending on your account entirely to protect your sender reputation — at that point you'd need to reach out to support to resume.

If your bounce rate is high and your reply rate is low, fix the list first. Rewriting the email won't help if a chunk of it never reaches a real inbox.

## What content patterns keep emails out of spam

A few patterns matter beyond just spelling names right:

- **Be specific, not vague.** Pin down real dates ("December 15, 2026") instead of relative language ("next month", "soon"). Vague, generic phrasing reads more like a template to both spam filters and to the person reading it.
- **State the offer plainly.** A clear price or clear scope beats hedged language — it also means the conversation that follows has something concrete to respond to.
- **Say what's excluded, not just what's included.** This keeps the conversation grounded in what you're actually offering.
- **Don't reuse a template that references a past or unrelated event.** Anything that reads as recycled or out of context looks worse to both the recipient and to spam filters that pattern-match on generic bulk phrasing.

Loop drafts and sends the actual email copy for a loop, following the objective and details you give it during setup. The more specific you are up front, the more specific the email — vague inputs produce vague, template-sounding output, which is exactly what spam filters and skeptical recipients both flag.

## How do I know when to step into a conversation myself

Once replies start coming in, Loop keeps handling the conversation by default — but some threads need you. Check your **Conversations** inbox regularly and look for signals like:

- Words like "stop," "remove," or "unsubscribe."
- The person pointing out something Loop got wrong.
- The same question being asked twice without a clear answer.
- Several back-and-forths without the conversation moving forward.

When you see any of these, open the thread and click **Take control**. Loop stops responding on that thread immediately so you can reply yourself. When you're done, you can click **Hand back to Loop** to let Loop resume the conversation — handing back is reversible, so you can take control again anytime.

## What should I actually watch after launch

Total emails sent isn't a health metric — reply rate is. It's the share of your sends that get a real reply, not counting bounces. Rough benchmarks from live Loop launches:

| Reply rate | What it means                                                  |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Under 0.5% | The pitch isn't landing. Revisit your first email.             |
| 1-3%       | Typical for cold outreach — you're in a normal range.          |
| 3-8%       | Good fit between your offer and your list.                     |
| Above 8%   | An engaged list or sharp positioning — worth doubling down on. |

Check reply rate alongside bounce rate on your **Dashboard**. If bounce rate is high and reply rate is low, the list is usually the problem, not the copy — fix the list first, then revisit your messaging.

## Where to go next

- Review your current bounce rate and reply rate from your **[Dashboard](/dashboard)**.
- Check in on active threads from **[Conversations](/conversations)**.
- Review or re-import your audience from **[People](/people)**.
- Adjust a loop's daily send cap from that loop's detail view under **[Loops](/loops)**.

If you hit a deliverability issue that isn't covered here, email us at [dharsan@topmate.io](mailto:dharsan@topmate.io) — we read every one.