Common Cold Email Setup Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The painful mistakes I made setting up my cold email infrastructure After sharing my email setup, got a bunch of people asking about the gotchas and issues I ran into. Here's all the dumb stuff I did wrong so you can skip the headaches:

The mistake: I didn't have a business name yet, so I sat there for literally 3 days trying to come up with the "perfect" domain. Total waste of time. The fix: If you have a business name, just add prefixes/suffixes like: get, app, hq, try, team, go, my, etc. So if you're "AcmeSEO" you grab getacmmesoe, tryacmeseo, acmeoteam (things like that). 2. Had no clue what hostnames and subdomains were The mistake: When SparkPost asked for hostname and subdomain setup, I just stared at the screen confused. Ended up guessing and breaking things. The fix: Hostname is usually something like "mail" or "smtp" and subdomain can be "em" or "email". So you'd have mail.yourdomain.com pointing to your SMTP. Not rocket science once you know. 3. Forgot to set up a bounce domain The mistake: Ignored this completely. Your bounce rate looked terrible and hurt deliverability. The fix: Set up a subdomain like bounce.yourdomain.com in SparkPost. Takes 2 minutes but saves your sender reputation. 4. Started DMARC with "reject" policy The mistake: Thought I was being smart by going straight to the strictest setting. Broke everything instantly. The fix: Always start with "none" for monitoring, then "quarantine" for a week, THEN move to "reject" if everything looks good. Don't be a hero. 5. Created way too many email aliases The mistake: Thought more aliases = better results. Created like 15 different ones per domain. The fix: Stick to 3 max per domain. Something like: hello@, contact@, and info@. More than that and you're asking for trouble. 6. Didn't test email authentication before going live The mistake: Set up all the DNS records and immediately started sending campaigns. Half my emails were failing authentication. The fix: Use MXToolbox or similar to test your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC before sending anything real. Save yourself the embarrassment. 7. Mixed up MX records with A records The mistake: Was pointing my MX records to an IP instead of the MXRoute hostname. Emails just disappeared into the void. The fix: MX records point to hostnames (like mx1.mxroute.com), not IP addresses. Basic stuff but easy to mess up. 8. Didn't warm up long enough The mistake: Got impatient after 1 week and started blasting. Instant spam folder city. The fix: Full 3 weeks of warm-up, no shortcuts. I know it's boring but your deliverability will thank you. Bonus stupidity: I tried to use the same domain for both sending and my actual website. Don't do this. Keep them separate. Anyone else run into weird issues setting this up? Feel like I'm forgetting some other dumb mistakes I made.