Notes from the deliverability lab.
BIMI for cold email: what it is, who can use it, and whether it actually helps placement
A logo next to your name in Gmail and Yahoo. Looks great in B2C marketing. Worth almost nothing for cold outbound until you cross specific thresholds.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23, 2026 · 5 min readWhy your cold email lands in Gmail Promotions (and what actually moves it to Primary)
Promotions is not spam. It is also not where most B2B cold email gets answered. Six signals Gmail uses to decide, and which ones you can move.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23Reading DMARC aggregate reports: what they tell you and which ones to ignore
DMARC reports look like XML dumps. They are actually one of the highest-signal deliverability data sources you have access to. Here is what to read first.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23How to recover cold-email sender reputation after a deliverability drop
Reputation recovery is slow, measurable, and reversible. A 30-day playbook for taking a flagged domain back to Primary inbox.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23When is the best time to send cold email in 2026?
Most "best time to send" advice is recycled B2C marketing wisdom. Here is what cold-email reply data actually shows for B2B outbound.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23How to get a cold-email domain delisted from a blacklist
Listings on Spamhaus, SURBL, Barracuda and the rest. Each list has its own delisting path. Some clear in hours; some take two weeks.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23What a cold email open rate actually means in 2026
Open rates have been compromised by Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Here is what the number actually means in 2026 and the benchmarks that survived the pixel-prefetch era.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23Cold email spam trigger words in 2026: which ones still matter and which ones do not
The classic spam-word lists are 90% noise in 2026. Modern filters look at patterns, not specific words. Here is what actually triggers Gmail and Outlook now.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23The 2026 cold-email deliverability checklist: 17 things to verify before scaling
Comprehensive pre-scale checklist for cold-email infrastructure. Every item is binary - pass or fix - with the dig command or test to confirm.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23Cold email vs LinkedIn outreach in 2026: where each channel wins
Both channels work. They have different reply rates, different costs, different scaling curves, and different burn risks. Honest comparison from actual operator data.
The InboxLee TeamMay 23