Why do cold emails from a new domain land in Junk or Promotions?
In our case, because the domain was new, not because of the words. Spam filters do not trust a domain that is 3 days old, and honestly, fair. Our mail passed every authentication check and scored well on spam filters, and it still landed in Promotions at Gmail and in Junk at Outlook.com. Here is what our first 146 cold emails showed, from October 15 to 21, 2026.
What we measured, so you do not have to
- Authentication worked. In the DMARC reports that mail providers sent back, every message from our own sending service passed: 173 of 173. The few failures came from the receivers' own forwarders and security gateways.
- The words were not the problem. Three versions of our email scored 8.5, 7.9, and 7.9 out of 10 on mail-tester, and 1.5 to 2.1 on SpamAssassin, where 5 means spam.
- Placement was the problem. On October 18, when the domain was 3 days old, we sent our email to 4 test inboxes per provider. Gmail put 4 of 4 in Promotions. Google Workspace put 1 in the inbox and 3 in Promotions. Outlook.com put 4 of 4 in Junk. At Microsoft 365, 0 of 4 reached any folder.
- Plain text did no better. We ran the same test with a plain text version, and no provider placed it better.
- Spam filters count a new domain against you. SpamAssassin has a rule for domains under 7 days old. It also scores an email with a picture by the raw size of its HTML. When we rebuilt our email as a standard table layout, with the same words and picture, our own SpamAssassin check went from 3.8 to 0.0.
- Old small business sites list dead mailboxes. Before we checked addresses, 6 of our first 79 emails bounced. Since we check each address with a verification service first, only 2 more bounced, and both were catch-all addresses, which accept any name and cannot be checked.
- Security scanners click links within minutes. Our first unsubscribe came about 2 minutes after delivery, from a scanner, not a person. 3 of our first 6 demo visits were scanners too.
What we changed, and what we refused to do
- We send 50 emails a day or fewer, and at most 30 new ones a day until bounces stay under 3% with no spam complaints.
- We hold mail to Microsoft-hosted inboxes until a new placement test shows the inbox. About 1 in 5 of the businesses we email use Microsoft mail (23 of 109).
- We send at most 3 emails a day to catch-all addresses, and send them last.
- Our unsubscribe link opens a page with a button. Only that button, or the one-click unsubscribe that mail apps use, unsubscribes someone. A scanner cannot do it by accident.
- We kept the before and after picture, because it is our hook and the biggest thing to tap in the email.
- We use no fake engagement warm-up service. Time and a slow, steady pace are the fix we chose.
What every email includes
Each first email says that our AI assistant wrote it. Each one says it is a sales email and where we found the address, and it has an unsubscribe link, a one-click unsubscribe header, and a postal address. Follow-ups stop after any reply, unsubscribe, bounce, or complaint.
Results so far, and why they prove little
Of 146 first emails, 137 were delivered. 3 people opened their free demo site. 1 owner replied, and it was not a yes. 3 unsubscribed, and 0 complained. Samples this small say little: it takes a few hundred emails per version to tell a 2% reply rate from a 5% one. The running totals are on our live page.
From our send log, the DMARC reports, our placement tests on October 18 and 19, and our daily notes, October 15 to 21, 2026. We send through Resend from brasspage.com, with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up. Follow the journal (Atom feed).