You've written a solid outbound sequence. The messaging is sharp, the targeting is tight, and your AI email campaigns are queued and ready to go. Then the results come back: 8% open rate, zero replies, and a growing suspicion that nobody is actually seeing your emails.
The problem is almost never the copy. It's what sits underneath it. Two things kill deliverability before your first sequence even gets a chance: broken or missing DNS records, and sending from a cold domain that hasn't been warmed up. Both are fixable. Most teams just don't know they exist until the damage is done.
What DNS Records Actually Do for Your Outbound Email
DNS records are the authentication layer that proves to receiving mail servers that you are who you say you are. Without them configured correctly, Gmail, Outlook, and other providers have no way to verify your domain. The result is simple: your emails go to spam, or they don't arrive at all.
There are three records every outbound sender needs to understand.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) tells receiving mail servers which IP addresses are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. If you're sending through a platform like Kolvera, Google Workspace, or any third-party tool, and your SPF record doesn't include that sending infrastructure, your emails will fail authentication checks.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a cryptographic signature to every email you send. The receiving server checks that signature against a public key stored in your DNS. If it matches, the email is considered legitimate. If it doesn't, or if DKIM isn't set up at all, you're sending unsigned mail into a world that's learned to distrust it.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receiving servers what to do when one or both checks fail. Start at p=none for monitoring, then progress to p=quarantine once your authentication is signing cleanly, and eventually to p=reject for full enforcement. Without DMARC, you're leaving a gap that spam filters will happily fill.
To check your DNS records for email sending, look up your domain's SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records using a free tool like MXToolbox. Your SPF should include every sending platform you use, your DKIM keys should match what your sending provider has given you, and your DMARC policy should start at "p=none" with a reporting email address. After two to four weeks of clean reports, move DMARC to "p=quarantine" to start enforcing alignment.
The Sending Domain vs Your Main Domain
A lot of sales teams make the same mistake: they set up their shiny new outbound campaigns and send directly from their primary company domain. That's the domain on your website, your support emails, and every other business communication you send.
If that domain ends up with a damaged reputation because of aggressive outbound, your whole business email operation suffers. Transactional emails, invoices, client responses. All of it.
The better approach is to use a dedicated sending domain. Something like reply.yourbusiness.com.au or outreach.yourbusiness.com.au. You configure the same DNS records on that subdomain or separate domain, warm it up independently, and protect your primary domain from any deliverability fallout.
This is standard practice in B2B sales, but it's still skipped constantly by smaller teams and recruitment agencies who are just getting started with structured outbound. The short-term convenience of sending from your main domain is not worth the long-term risk.
Inbox Warming: Why You Can't Just Start Sending at Volume
Even if your DNS is perfect, a brand-new domain or email address has no sending history. Mail providers don't know you. They haven't seen consistent engagement from your address, and they have no reason to trust that your messages are wanted.
When you start sending 200 emails a day from a fresh domain, spam filters notice. The sending velocity looks exactly like what a spammer does when they register a throwaway domain and blast a list. Your emails get filtered, your domain reputation drops, and you've created a hole that can take months to climb out of.
Inbox warming is the process of building that reputation gradually. It means starting with a low daily send volume, getting real positive engagement (opens, replies, emails moved out of spam), and slowly increasing over several weeks. There are dedicated warming tools that automate this by having your address exchange emails with a network of other addresses, mimicking genuine correspondence.
Inbox warming typically takes four to six weeks before a new sending domain is ready for outbound campaigns at meaningful volume. A safe ramp starts at 5 to 10 emails per day in weeks one and two, increases to 15 to 20 per day in weeks three and four, then 30 to 40 per day in weeks five and six. From week seven onwards, cap each inbox at 50 emails per day for cold outbound. Skipping this process and sending at full volume immediately is one of the most common reasons outbound email campaigns fail from the start.
The 2024-2025 Bulk Sender Rules You Cannot Ignore
The deliverability landscape changed significantly over the last two years. If you're running outbound and you haven't kept up, you're sending into a tighter set of rules than the one you remember.
In February 2024, Google and Yahoo introduced new requirements for bulk senders, defined as anyone sending 5,000 or more emails per day to consumer Gmail or Yahoo addresses. The rules require SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to be configured correctly, with DMARC alignment passing on every send. They also require a one-click unsubscribe header on every marketing email, and a spam complaint rate that stays below 0.3 percent.
Through 2025, enforcement escalated. Google moved from temporary delays to permanent rejections for non-compliant mail. Microsoft introduced parallel requirements for Outlook, Hotmail, and Live.com addresses, with full enforcement from May 2025 onwards. Non-compliant senders now receive a hard rejection error: "550 5.7.515 Access denied, sending domain does not meet the required authentication level."
Most Australian recruitment and B2B teams send well under 5,000 emails per day to consumer addresses, so the bulk-sender threshold doesn't strictly apply. But the rules signal where the entire industry is heading. The same authentication standards now influence inbox placement decisions for senders well below the formal threshold. If your DNS is shaky, you'll feel the pressure even if you never hit 5,000 sends.
In 2024, Google and Yahoo began requiring all bulk senders (5,000 or more emails per day to consumer addresses) to configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC correctly, include a one-click unsubscribe header, and maintain a spam complaint rate below 0.3 percent. Microsoft introduced equivalent rules for Outlook addresses with full enforcement from May 2025. Non-compliant emails are now permanently rejected, not just sent to spam.
How This Connects to AI Email Sequences Specifically
AI-generated email sequences create a specific deliverability risk that's worth understanding. When you're sending personalised, multi-step sequences to a list of prospects, you're often sending a higher volume of outbound than a team would have managed manually. That's the point. The efficiency is real.
But that same efficiency means deliverability issues scale just as fast as the sending volume does. If your DNS is broken or your domain is cold, the problem doesn't stay small for long. One bad week of sending from an unprepared domain can take your sender reputation from clean to damaged before you've had a chance to notice.
Good AI email campaign platforms account for this. Kolvera's multi-step outbound sequences include auto-pause on reply, which means the system stops contacting a prospect the moment they respond. That's not just a nice feature for managing replies, it's also a deliverability behaviour. Sending emails to people who've already engaged reduces the chance of complaints, and keeping sequences relevant reduces unsubscribes. Both matter to your sender reputation.
But the platform can only do so much. The DNS setup and warming process has to happen on your side, before you start sending.
A Practical Checklist Before You Launch Any Outbound Sequence
Before you send your first AI email campaign, work through this list.
DNS records: Confirm SPF includes your sending platform. Confirm DKIM keys are published in your DNS and match what your sending tool requires. Set up a DMARC record starting at p=none with a reporting email address, and plan to move it to p=quarantine after a few weeks of clean reports.
Sending domain: Decide whether you're sending from your primary domain or a dedicated subdomain. For any serious outbound volume, a dedicated domain is the right call.
Warming period: Allow four to six weeks of warming before you run sequences at full volume. Use a warming tool, or at minimum start with a very low daily send cap and increase it gradually.
Test before you send: Use a tool like Mail-Tester or GlockApps to run a deliverability check on your actual emails. They'll flag DNS issues, spam trigger words, and HTML problems you might not spot otherwise. Aim for a score of 9 out of 10 or better before sending campaigns.
Monitor after you send: Watch your bounce rate and spam complaint rate. Google Postmaster Tools is free and gives you visibility into how Gmail treats your domain. Keep your spam complaint rate below 0.1 percent. If it climbs above 0.3 percent, stop sending and investigate before you do further damage.
The most common reasons B2B email campaigns land in spam are missing or misconfigured SPF and DKIM records, sending from a domain with no established reputation, and high bounce rates caused by unverified contact lists. Fixing DNS authentication is free and takes under an hour. Inbox warming takes four to six weeks but requires almost no ongoing effort once the process is set up.
The Bigger Picture for Australian Sales Teams
Australian businesses face the same deliverability challenges as anyone else, but there are a few local factors worth keeping in mind. If you're sending to contacts at Australian companies, you're often hitting Outlook inboxes running through Microsoft 365. Microsoft tightened its filtering significantly through 2025, and from May 2025 their systems began rejecting emails that fail authentication outright rather than sending them to spam. DMARC compliance is no longer optional if you want to land in Australian enterprise inboxes.
Contact data quality also plays a role. If you're working from verified Australian business contacts, sourced through platforms that check email validity before you send, your bounce rate stays low. High bounce rates are one of the fastest ways to damage your sender reputation. Enriched, verified contacts aren't just about reaching the right person. They're part of your deliverability strategy.
Teams using Kolvera for outbound get contact enrichment built into the same platform as the email sequences, which means verified emails before the sequence runs rather than discovering bad data through bounces. If you're curious how other Australian sales teams are approaching this, the customer stories section covers a few different approaches.
Getting the Foundation Right
AI email campaigns are genuinely useful for outbound sales. The ability to run personalised, multi-step sequences without manual follow-up effort is a real advantage for recruitment agencies, IT businesses, and B2B sales teams running lean. But none of that matters if the emails don't arrive.
DNS setup and inbox warming are not technical hurdles you can skip and fix later. They're the foundation. Get them right before you send a single sequence, and your campaign results will reflect the effort you put into the messaging itself. Skip them, and you'll spend months wondering why good copy isn't converting.
If you want to see how Kolvera handles the campaign side of this, including auto-pause on reply and contact enrichment, you can book a demo or start a trial and explore it on your own terms.