How AiSDR Rebuilt a Client’s Sender Reputation for Cold Outreach
If your sender reputation tanks, it’s not the end of the world. Here’s how our customer success team rebuilt a client’s sender reputation
One of our clients came to us after trying out a different AI SDR.
They had created a new mailbox to use with the other AI SDR, connected it to their warm-up, and started cold outreach. The initial daily volume was small at 20 emails a day for three weeks before they increased it to 100.
In less than a day, the mailbox was blocked.
They messaged their AI SDR’s support, which replied ‘Check if you’re using spammy language.’
It was at this point that the client reached out to AiSDR for help.
TLDR:
- The goal: Help a client relaunch cold outreach.
- The tactic: Warm up a new mailbox and rebuild the old mailbox’s sender reputation.
- The result: The client resumed cold outreach and rehabbed the mailbox.
Step 1: Explain what went wrong
Long story short, the client’s mailbox wasn’t properly warmed up for outreach.
Here’s a side-by-side look at what happened versus what should have happened.
| What happened | Good inbox warm-up |
| Started volume at 20 emails/day | Start volume at ~5 emails/day |
| Kept volume at 20 emails/day for 3 weeks | Maintain current volume for 7 days |
| Increased volume to 100 emails/day | Increase daily volume each week by 5-7 emails |
| Set max daily volume at 100 emails/day | Set max daily volume at 49 emails/day |
Ultimately, the client started inbox warm-up too high then increased it too quickly. Good warm-up needs to happen gradually.
Step 2: Set up a new domain and mailbox
If your mailbox gets blocked, you have three choices:
- “Rehabilitate” the mailbox by rebuilding the sender reputation
- Start over from scratch by creating a new domain and mailbox
- Create a new domain and mailbox while starting the rehabilitation process for the old mailbox
The option you use is up to you.
In our case, the client chose the third option of creating a new mailbox while rehabbing the old one.
While setting up the new domain, we made sure to correctly configure the DKIM, DMARC, and SPF email protocols. Otherwise, emails sent from associated mailboxes are likely to land in spam and go unopened.
Step 3: Start ‘rehabbing’ the old mailbox
The client was able to relaunch their cold outreach using the domain and mailbox we set up for them.
However, they also wanted to rehab the old mailbox so that the money spent wouldn’t go to waste.
Here’s what we did:
- Submitted an appeal to the email service provider to unblock the mailbox
- Once the appeal was approved and we could access the mailbox again, we connected it to the AiSDR warm-up tool for three weeks
- During this time, the old mailbox wasn’t used for any cold outreach
- Every few days, we checked the mailbox’s sender reputation to confirm it was improving
Step 4: Restart cold outreach
After three weeks, if the sender reputation hasn’t improved enough to run SDR outreach, you just need to keep warming up the mailbox and not use it for any cold emails. Given enough time, the reputation will recover.
Then once the reputation is back to normal, you can start running outreach.
Our recommendation is:
- Send no more than 30 emails per day per mailbox
- Send no more than 100 emails per day per domain
- Warm up every mailbox at a 1:1 ratio of warm-up emails to cold emails
The Result
Everyone loves instant gratification and wants to see immediate results.
While there’s nothing wrong with this, cold outreach doesn’t work this way. New deliverability rules set up over the past few years to cut down on spam have made cold outreach more challenging than ever.
Just keep in mind that if you plan to launch cold outreach:
- Start initial email volume low
- Gradually increase the max daily volume once every week
- Cap the max daily volume at no more than 49 emails per day
