How I sent 100 cold emails as a founder and none went to spam (2026 edition)

I sent my first batch of cold outreach emails yesterday. Every one of them landed in the inbox — not a single one hit spam or the Promotions tab in Gmail. That is not how it usually goes. Most founders send their first batch, don't notice anything is wrong, then two weeks later realize their domain reputation is already scorched and they're invisible to Gmail forever. Here is the actual setup I used. It is all unglamorous infrastructure work. None of it is clever. 1. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — all t