Cold Email Deliverability: How to Protect Your Domain While Scaling Outreach
Cold email remains one of the highest-ROI acquisition channels for B2B SaaS when done right. Done wrong, it burns your domain, lands you on blacklists, and destroys deliverability for your transactional email too.
The cardinal rule: never cold email from your primary domain
Your primary domain is the same one you use for product transactional emails. If cold email causes it to be blacklisted, your entire email programme is compromised. Register secondary domains specifically for outreach: getcompany.com, trycompany.com, heycompany.com.
Domain warming: why it matters
New email domains have no sending reputation. ISPs are suspicious of new senders sending high volumes immediately. A warm-up schedule: Week 1: 5-10 emails per day. Week 2: 15-25. Week 3: 30-40. Week 4: 50-75. Week 5 and beyond: 75-100.
List verification is non-negotiable for cold outreach
Cold outreach lists are typically purchased or scraped. The data quality is almost always poor. Before loading into your sequencer: verify every address, remove role addresses, treat catch-alls as risky, and cross-reference against known complainers.
Technical setup checklist
- Secondary domain registered and aged 2+ weeks before first send
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured on the outbound domain
- Custom tracking domain - avoid shared click-tracking domains
- Unsubscribe link in every email
