How do I send cold email without landing in spam?

What spam filters actually react to

Gmail and the other big mailbox providers do not read your email and decide it is salesy. They score the sender and the pattern. A new inbox that suddenly sends 300 messages looks like a hijacked account. An address that hits 20 dead mailboxes in a row looks like a list someone bought. A message that three recipients mark as spam teaches the filter to treat the next one the same way.

So the fixes are not tricks. Send fewer emails, to better-chosen people, from an address that looks like a person, and make it easy to leave. The rest of this page puts those four ideas in order.

Start with a checklist you can finish in an hour

Do these before the first send. None of them cost money.

1. Send from a real mailbox that a person reads, with their name on it.
2. If you use a custom domain, make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set. Google Workspace walks you through all three in the admin console.
3. Put a real postal address and a plain way to opt out in the email.
4. Write in plain text or close to it. No big images, no heavy formatting, no more than one link.
5. Pick a daily cap and stay under it for the first two weeks.
6. Decide now what happens when someone replies, so the follow-ups stop.

Google also publishes sender guidelines. Senders who push very large volumes are asked to authenticate their mail, offer one-click unsubscribe, and keep the share of recipients who report spam very low (Google names under 0.10% as the target and says never reach 0.30%). A cold sender with a few dozen emails a day is far below the volume those rules are written for, but the numbers show how little tolerance there is for complaints. One complaint in 300 is already over the line.

Ramp up instead of starting at full speed

A mailbox that has sent ten emails a week for two years can send more than one created yesterday. Treat a new inbox as new even if the address is old, and raise volume in steps.

Week 1: 10 to 15 a day.
Week 2: 20 to 30 a day.
Week 3: 30 to 40 a day.
After that: only go higher if replies are coming in and bounces stay low.

That is a conservative schedule, not a rule from Google. Its job is to give you time to catch a problem (a bad list, a wording that gets complaints) while it affects 15 people and not 300. If you use Rocketship, each new inbox ramps up on its own to a ceiling of 60 cold emails a day, so you do not have to track the steps by hand.

Pick recipients so bounces and complaints stay rare

Most deliverability trouble is a list problem. Emails to addresses that do not exist bounce, and a high bounce rate is a strong signal that you are mailing a list you did not build. Complaints come from people who never had a reason to hear from you.

Build your list from people who plausibly have the problem you solve: a role, a business type and a place you can describe in one sentence. If you cannot say why this person would care, leave them out. A list of 80 right people beats 800 maybes. Our guides on <A href="/press/how-to-build-a-lead-list">building a lead list</A> and <A href="/press/cold-email-bounce-rate">cold email bounce rate</A> go deeper.

Rocketship does not verify every address before it sends, so watch your own bounces. If more than a few percent of a first batch bounce, pause and fix the list before sending more.

Write the email so nobody wants to report it

A short email that names the person and asks one honest question rarely gets reported. A long one full of claims does. Here is a version a fictional landscaper might send to a property manager:

Subject: Mowing at Alder Court Hi Renata, I run Fenwick Grounds. We mow and edge about 20 apartment communities in the east side of Columbus. I noticed Alder Court's front lawn was patchy last week and wondered whether you are looking at other crews. If not, no problem. If you are, I can quote it this week. Tomas Fenwick Fenwick Grounds, 400 Example Rd, Columbus, OH 43215 Reply "stop" and I will not write again.

Notice what is missing: no attachment, no tracking-pixel image, no "revolutionary", no three links. The opt-out line is plain. Rocketship also turns on one-click unsubscribe by default and does not add an open-tracking pixel unless you ask for one.

Follow up, but stop when you should

Most replies come on the second or third touch, so follow up. Three to four emails over about two weeks is a reasonable plan (see <A href="/answers/how-many-follow-ups-cold-email">how many follow-ups a cold email should get</A>). What damages your sender reputation is continuing after a reply, a booking or an opt-out. Sending a fourth reminder to someone who already said "not now" is how a polite email becomes a spam report.

Rocketship sequences stop on their own when someone replies, books a meeting or unsubscribes, so that mistake cannot happen by accident.

What no tool can promise

Be wary of anyone who guarantees inbox placement. Mailbox providers decide, and they change the rules. Rocketship sends from your own Gmail or Google Workspace account, not a shared pool, so your reputation is yours. It does not run a warm-up network, it does not verify addresses, and it does not guarantee delivery. It works with Gmail only, not Outlook or Microsoft 365.

What it does is keep the behavior that filters look for within sensible bounds: gradual ramp-up, a daily ceiling, one-click unsubscribe, and sequences that stop on reply. See <A href="/pricing">plans and pricing</A>. Launch is $24.99 a month and starts with a 7-day free trial, card required.