Five phases, four approval gates, no surprises
Outbound goes wrong in predictable places: a list nobody checked, a domain nobody warmed, copy nobody read before it went to 3,000 people. Each phase below exists to close one of those failure modes, and you sign off before we move on.
- Days 1–3
- Kickoff & qualification standard
- Days 2–8
- Research & targeting
- Days 1–21
- Infrastructure & warm-upRuns in parallel — this is the long pole
- Days 5–10
- Message writing & approval
- Day 10
- First send
- Weeks 3–6
- First meetings typically land
Agree the qualification standard
A working session with whoever knows your buyers best — usually a founder or a VP Sales, not a marketing brief. We're after the specifics: which segments close fastest, which titles actually sign, what the trigger event looks like, which competitors you win against and why, and which accounts must never be contacted.
The output is a written ICP document. It matters because it becomes the standard we're measured against — when you dispute a meeting later, this is the document we both look at.
- Written ICP and segment definitions
- Buying titles and seniority floor
- Exclusion list (customers, partners, competitors)
- Qualification standard
Research and targeting
We identify the accounts worth approaching, find the right people inside each one, and work out the reason each should care right now — a funding round, a hire, a launch, a change in their stack. Every record is checked by a person before it becomes a target.
You see the target list before any message exists. Strike anything you don't want approached; we don't argue about it.
- Target list
- Segment split
- Opening angle per segment
Infrastructure and warm-up
Started on day one because it's the constraint on everything else. We register sending domains, configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC, provision mailboxes and run a staged volume ramp over 3–4 weeks before real sending begins.
This is the phase clients most often ask us to compress. We won't — a domain sent to full volume from cold is the single most reliable way to end a campaign in week three.
- Sending domains (yours to keep)
- Authentication records
- Warm-up completion report
Message writing and approval
Copy is written per segment, not per campaign — a platform engineering lead and a VP Finance do not respond to the same argument, and sending them the same email is why most outbound reads like spam. Typically 6–8 touches across email and LinkedIn over 3–4 weeks.
You read every message before it sends. Rewrite anything. It's your brand in the recipient's inbox.
- Every email, per segment
- LinkedIn message copy
- Sending schedule and volume
Book, qualify, hand off, adjust
Sending starts. Replies are handled by a person the same working day — positives, objections, referrals and opt-outs alike. Anything that passes the qualification standard gets booked directly into your calendar with a one-page brief and the full thread attached.
Weekly reporting from the first send: sends, deliveries, replies, positive rate, meetings and held rate, broken out by segment. Fortnightly we meet to decide what to change — usually the segment mix or the opening argument, occasionally the offer itself.
- Weekly dashboard
- Fortnightly strategy call
- Meeting disputes reviewed together
What you see every week
Vanity metrics are easy to hit and tell you nothing. These are the numbers that let you diagnose a campaign rather than just feel good about it.
| Metric | What it tells you | What we do when it's bad |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery rate | Whether your messages are arriving at all | Pause, audit authentication, rotate domains |
| Reply rate | Whether the opening line earns attention | Rewrite subject lines and first sentences |
| Positive rate | Whether the argument lands with this segment | Change the argument, or change the segment |
| Meeting rate | Whether interest converts to committed time | Tighten the ask; check the calendar friction |
| Held rate | Whether the meetings were real | Raise the qualification bar, add confirmations |
| Rate by segment | Which part of your ICP actually wants this | Reallocate volume to what's working |
See it applied to your ICP
Twenty minutes, and we'll walk through what the qualification standard and the first two phases would look like for your market — plus a realistic meeting range, quoted low.