Deliverability Baseline Before First Send (Onboarding)

Deliverability Baseline Before First Send (Onboarding)

1. 01

   Provision sending domains and mailboxes separate from the agency's own corporate domain

   Register a dedicated subdomain per client (for example outreach.clientdomain.com) and warm it over 2 to 3 weeks. Never let a client's outbound cadence run through the agency's primary domain, because one bad list can burn the agency's own reply rates.

2. 02

   Authenticate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and confirm all three pass on a live test message

   Send a test to a seed inbox and inspect the raw headers. A missing DMARC record is the most common reason a new sequence lands in spam from day one.

3. 03

   Verify the contact list against a real-time validation service before import

   Bounce rates above 2 percent on a first send will throttle the mailbox for weeks. Run the list through validation, strip catch-all and role-based addresses, and log the pre-clean and post-clean counts for the client.

4. 04

   Set daily send ceilings per mailbox and per domain

   Start at 20 to 30 sends per mailbox per day for a warmed domain and cap total domain volume at a level the client's IT team has approved. Apollo and Amplemarket both expose these limits, but the number is a policy decision, not a default.

5. 05

   Document the client's consent basis and opt-out handling in writing

   Record where the list came from, which jurisdiction applies, and how unsubscribe requests propagate back to the source database. Salesloft and Buzz sync opt-outs to the CRM, but only if the field mapping is configured before launch.

6. 06

   Run a 50-contact pilot batch and measure inbox placement before scaling

   Track open rate, bounce rate, and spam complaints on the pilot. If placement is below 80 percent, stop and fix infrastructure rather than adding volume.

7. 07

   Hand the client a one-page baseline sheet with domain, mailbox count, daily caps, and pilot metrics

   This sheet becomes the reference point for every later QA review and for any ROI conversation about the retainer.