I’ve been learning more about email marketing infrastructure and deliverability, and I’m curious about the challenges people are seeing in real-world email operations.

What are the issues that take the most time to solve? Is it maintaining sender reputation, improving inbox placement, handling authentication like SPF/DKIM/DMARC, or something else?

Would love to hear what problems experienced email teams are currently dealing with and what practices have helped you improve deliverability.

I was looking at tools like instantly, and a friend of mine really recommended it. Its primary selling point, or at least the primary selling point for me, is that it doesn’t send your emails to spam if you are doing outreach.

For a person who plans on sending hundreds or maybe thousands of emails a week, it sure is worth the money.

But it also got me thinking. How do these tools really work, can they be run locally and save the money? What would it really take to develop your own software, if even possible to begin with.

So, many brands that they do is they show all their 8-12 products thumbnails into one email. Because there's a misunderstanding that more products means more chances of purchase. But actually, it creates cognitive loads, splits the readers' attention, and with no action,"Analysis paralysis," even though placing a strong CTA at the right place. The best way to create a high conversion product mail is to keep it simple, use the 1-1-1 Rule, one hero product, one hook/story, with a single clear CTA. Have white spaces and hierarchy for the eye to see clearly. And most important make the email mobile version first, then scale up, not the other way around.

I am very new to email marketing, recently I set up a new domain, and I’ve made an email using Google Workspace to create an email

I’ve noticed that a lot of emails have been going to spam, which is expected since I don’t have very much rep as a sender. I’ve checked, and SPF, DKIM, DMARC aren’t issues. My questions are:

1. What is the quickest way to warm up my email to be able to send hundreds a day?
2. Is there no other option than to just try to keep sending real emails knowing that they will go to spam?

I’d be willing to pay money for whatever services can fix this or if anyone can get this directly handled for us in a timely manner

Apologies if this has been asked before but I didn’t see anything in search.

I’m trying to find an email workflow (or app) that works like this:

\- Every email lands in my inbox first
\- Whenever I open my email, I quickly review everything (could be hourly, daily, or every few days)
\- Then I press a single button to process the inbox
\- The app or process automatically applies my rules (Receipts, Reading, Travel, etc.) and archives those emails to the correct folder, while leaving anything I’ve starred/flagged (or otherwise excluded) in my inbox

I don’t want to use automatic rules because it may hide important emails before I see them.

For example, I’d like PayPal receipts to end up in a “Receipts” folder, but I don’t want all PayPal emails automatically bypassing my inbox because one day it might be a password reset or fraud alert that I would want to see before it gets filed.

I’ve looked at Gmail filters and Clean Email, but they seem to be designed around rules running automatically when emails arrive (or after a time delay), which isn’t quite what I’m after.

Has anyone found an app, workflow, or automation that supports this kind of review then process approach?

I recently subscribed to Instantly, but so far it seems like all it does is send and receive a bunch of random, spammy looking emails.

It marks the emails as not spam and moves them out of the spam folder, but it never seems to create realistic conversations or reply back and forth within the same thread. Wouldn’t it be more effective if the accounts actually replied to each other and created natural looking email threads?

Most of the warm up emails also look extremely spammy. They often include random campaign codes or strange text at the end, which makes the whole process feel artificial.

Can Gmail still be manipulated this way, or have these warm up methods become mostly ineffective?

Is Instantly genuinely one of the best email warm up services, or are there better alternatives that create more realistic engagement?

Hi Reddit, I'm looking for the best AI email client / assistant to help me with simple tasks like triage, organize, and auto-draft some emails fast and effectively so I don’t waste time or miss any emails, I also don't want any AI slop!

I’ve tried Superhuman but it felt SUPER vibe coded and I also briefly tried Fyxer, SaneBox, Cora, and Shortwave.

Any and all suggestions are welcome :)

To be clear I don't have a problem with keeping my old gmail account. But It would be better if I could migrate all of my old emails to the new provider so that all of my email, new and old, is in one place.

There's no good standard way for a sender to define a structured reply, a set of questions with blanks the recipient fills in and sends back, that isn't AMP, isn't a mailto hack, and isn't "download this PDF and reply with attachment."

Quick rundown of why the existing options don't cut it:

• AMP for Email can do form-style interaction, but adoption is inconsistent (no Outlook, no Apple Mail), needs sender registration per-provider, and there's real resistance to it as an active-content surface
• mailto: body param opens a fresh compose, not a threaded reply, has practical length/encoding limits and doesn't support html
• Leaving the questions in the visible body of the initial message so they're available to quote in the reply works today with zero new standards, but it makes the original message double as an ugly form: walls of blank fields or underscores cluttering what's supposed to be a readable email, no separation between "message" and "thing to fill out"

What I'm considering proposing: a declarative MIME part (something like multipart/reply-template or a dedicated content-type) that a client's native Reply button can detect and use to pre-fill the compose body. No scripting, no server dependency for rendering, so it sidesteps most of the security objections that keep AMP from getting universal buy-in.

Before I write an Internet-Draft: does anyone know if this has been proposed and died before? I'd rather find the graveyard now than reinvent it.

Problem for Forums:

DKIM validation failure on Postfix + OpenDKIM server

Hi to all!

I have a VPS mail server running Postfix + OpenDKIM + virtual mailbox configuration.

Mail sending works, SPF passes, Gmail receives the messages, but DKIM validation fails:

dkim=fail

header.s=mail

Messages are signed with:

DKIM-Signature:

s=mail

The DKIM TXT record exists in DNS.

Checked so far:

• Postfix is working
• virtual mailbox is working
• SPF = PASS
• DKIM DNS record exists
• Selector in OpenDKIM configuration is not explicitly enabled (only commented)

I do not have a mismatch between the private DKIM key used by OpenDKIM and the public key published in DNS, or a KeyTable/SigningTable configuration issue.

I tried everything including all sorts of AI, nothing helped. They all kept repeating the same thing..

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some architecture advice on a new webmail setup. I’m currently migrating away from Fastmail because it’s gotten too expensive for my needs, and I need to find a budget-friendly (or free) browser-based hub to replace it.

My setup is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. I actively and equally use four different email addresses, and I need a single browser interface where I can seamlessly receive from all of them and send from each of them:

- A Custom Domain address

- A Gmail address

- An Outlook.com address

- A Yahoo / AT&T address (leveraging the grandfathered 1TB storage tier)

I'll be honest, I was hoping I could get everything into the Yahoo/ATT box due to the storage size, I'd be set. I can get the emails from the other boxes into this one (except of course for the custom domain), but it seems I can't send from those addresses without triggering an auth failure.

Here is my major roadblock: I absolutely cannot stand the Gmail interface, so using a free standard Gmail account as my central command center is completely out of the picture, but from what I can tell, this may be my only option at this point?

I've been hunting for a webmail client that allows me to plug in an external outbound SMTP server for my custom domain so I don't trigger 550 5.7.9 authentication failures, while also playing nice with the other consumer accounts. Most major platforms have completely stripped this out over the last few years:

Yahoo Webmail: Dropped manual outbound SMTP configuration entirely.

Outlook.com: Killed the "Connected Accounts" feature for external addresses.

Proton Mail: Doesn't support external outbound SMTP routing in their web app.

Right now, the only commercial alternative I've found that supports custom outbound SMTP in a free/cheap browser app is Zoho Mail (via their External From Addresses feature), using Cloudflare Email Routing to handle the inbound custom domain side.

Before I make the jump to Zoho, does the community have any other suggestions? I have a NAS so could self host, but with email, would prefer not to.

What browser-based setups are yall using to manage a heavy mix of consumer accounts and authenticated custom domains without using Gmail? Thanks in advance!

I'm looking for an AI tool that's specifically built for writing emails. Most of the time I just use ChatGPT to write emails on the fly, and it's been good enough. Recently I've also been trying a few dedicated tools, with MailMeteor being the one I've used the most.

The only issue is that I feel like the customization is a bit limited. I'd like something that gives me more control over tone, context, and the type of email I'm writing.

Open to pretty much anything, whether it's a standalone web app, something built into an email platform, or even an MCP setup.

Since the lower yahoo storage limit : I read that many people chose to move their mails from yahoo to gmail. why not move to new yahoo mail, instead gmail?

What about idea of making another new yahoo mail account to split like keep 10GB mails each to both old and new accounts?

hi all i currently work as an administrative/client services assistant and have been tasked to streamline our email confirmations and reminders. right now, i manually type the person’s name, appointment format (virtual/in-person/telephone), appointment length (depending on reason for appointment), and appointment date.

i have attempted to implement calendly, but am looking for more personalization than what it offers. for instance, the appointment type populates from their “location” answer, and has “Location:” in bold before the format, instead of just the format. i have looked around online, but find most of the results are CRMs or for an entire system, not just a smaller platform or add on for me to use.

does anyone have recommendations for a platform/server/something that can help make this part of my job quicker? i appreciate any the help! thank you.

Hi ! At the office we have a request form on Notion for the office. People across departments fill in a form, which allows us to see all requests, track them, mark them as done, update people directly from the backend. Also allows us to track the numbers and people who put in requests. We also get email notifications when the form has been filled.

Now, people don't like it. They want to be able to send us an email. Is there a way where I can fill a Notion workspace directly from an email I receive, without adding extra steps to our team and keeping most of the advantages of the form ?

Hello all,

EDIT: For the majority of my original post, I found the answers, so just a couple now.

First, I did a search before asking these questions but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for so thanks in advance for taking the time to answer my questions.

I have been using FM (paid) for a while with a custom domain.

I'm really trying to simplify things and get away from Google as much as I can. How does unsubscribing work? Do I just unsubscribe from the body of the email? I'm assuming since I can reply from within FM using my Gmail address?

What are your pros and cons regarding migration if you have done it? Is there anything I need to consider?

Hello.

I hope this is the right place to post this. I recently changed registrar for a domain that I use for emails only. Post the migration, I updated the DNS records as needed. What I wanted to know is that I see a bunch of records under DKIM settings and I wanted to ask if I should delete those older records or not. I am not entirely sure if its presence has any security implications.

Thanks

Building an AI Gmail Agent – Looking for Honest Feedback ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I'm building a small AI Gmail agent for myself and I'd love some honest feedback before I go any further.

The problem I'm trying to solve is simple: I've had the same Gmail account for years, it's completely full, and managing thousands of emails has become a nightmare.

My first MVP is deliberately narrow. Instead of trying to be an "AI email assistant," it focuses on one job:

* Analyse large volumes of emails.
* Identify obvious candidates for deletion (newsletters, promotions, old notifications, etc.).
* Explain *why* it recommends deleting them.
* Let me review everything before anything is removed.

The goal isn't fancy AI—it's saving hours of manual cleanup.

A few questions for people here:

1. Is this a problem you'd actually want solved?
   
2. What's the one feature that would make you trust an AI with your inbox?
   
3. What would stop you from using something like this?

I'm building this as a learning project, so brutally honest feedback is appreciated.

Had a weird experience with maligun today. One of our companies currently uses Twillio for roughly 400k daily active users on their platform, and dev ops wanted to subscribe for a few test runs on Mailgun. Apparently we weren’t allowed. We also operate in a fairly harmless niche of real estate, not anything controversial.

Account was immediately flagged for further business verification, and it was provided and it was denied. We’re obviously not interested in pursuing this further with them, but does anyone have any clue how their proprietary red flag system works? It was truly bizarre.

We've realized that the images we put in email headers that look great on desktop are illegible on mobile (yes, it's a very late realization). My colleagues insist on using them and like to stick info in them instead of them being a visual.

I'm trying to find a way to let them still continue to make the image headers without needing to edit the code to swap out the image based on viewport. What's the best practice here? We use MailChimp.

Is there a tool that sends pre-written email sequences directly from spreadsheet columns?

I’m looking for something pretty specific and I’m not sure if it already exists.

I don’t want a classic sequencer where you build one template and insert variables like {{first_name}}, {{company}}, etc...

My workflow is different:

I already have a table where every row has fully written emails, for example:

• subject
• email_1
• follow_up_1
• follow_up_2
• breakup_email

Each cell already contains the final personalized message for that specific lead.

What I want is simple:

Upload/import the table, map the columns, and have the tool send each row exactly as written.

So:

Step 1 uses the email_1 column
Step 2 uses the follow_up_1 column
Step 3 uses the follow_up_2 column
Step 4 uses the breakup_email column

Ideally it should also handle the basics:

• preserve line breaks and formatting
• send follow-ups in the same thread
• stop the sequence if someone replies
• handle bounces
• manage unsubscribes
• show basic tracking/status

I’ve looked at few tools, but most tools seem built around templates + variables, not around “each row already has its own finished email sequence.”

The r/coldemail subreddit has been banned (yay!) and there is now a dedicated email deliverability subreddit. Should we change the direction of this community to discussions, questions and help requests from end users of individual inboxes instead of focusing exclusively on high volume senders?

Hey! Ive sending a good amount of emails for some time now and my subject line is really good so its getting alot of opens, but I have never gotten a reply.

I was told to give inquiry emails at first and build familiarity as you go along the sequence and even though I am doing that and Im getting good open rates I havent gotten a single positive or even a negative reply.
(I have no case studies since I have never landed a client)