Yes
Thanks, that’s a really good point Mary One important detail: reply rates on Email 1 have also dropped significantly compared to where they used to be. We used to see around 1.52% replies on the first email, but that later dropped to around 0.14%. That’s actually when we first started investigating deliverability. We ran inbox placement tests for Email 1 only, and they came back looking good, despite the reply rate remaining very low. Later we noticed another pattern: once prospects move into the follow-up sequence, replies almost completely disappear. Regarding the pre-warmed Instantly infrastructure, one theory from my outbound specialist is that the lower reply rates could simply be because those domains aren’t branded. I’m not fully convinced that branding alone could explain such a dramatic difference, but I’d be interested in your opinion. Based on everything you’ve seen, would you still prioritize running inbox placement tests for each email in the sequence?
Thanks, this is really helpful Mary DNS (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) has already been reviewed by our outbound specialist, so as far as we know everything is configured correctly. When you mention checking domain/IP reputation and whether the warmup network is affecting sender trust, could you elaborate on that? Specifically:
How would you check this in practice?
Which tools would you use?
If the warmup network is indeed the main suspect, what would you consider the safest next step? Yesterday I paused warmup completely because I honestly wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. Would you recommend moving to a different warmup provider, or is there another approach? Regarding your question: Historically, we only sent from Google Workspace, so I can’t really compare Google vs Microsoft. After we saw a significant drop in replies from our Google infrastructure, we started sending from Microsoft, but we don’t have a baseline because we hadn’t used it before. As I mentioned above, many of those Microsoft domains are blacklisted as well. The only infrastructure that isn’t blacklisted is a pre-warmed infrastructure we purchased from Instantly. However, reply rates there are also much lower than expected. There’s also another interesting pattern. Our sequence is:
Email 1 – no image
Emails 2 & 3 – with an image
Email 4 – no image
We’ve now sent around 2,000 emails. We get a couple of replies to Email 1, and then almost complete silence afterwards. It almost feels like deliverability “dies” after the first touch. These emails are slightly different from the versions we tested previously, but getting virtually zero replies at this volume is extremely unusual. That’s why I’m trying to understand whether we’re dealing with a deliverability issue rather than a copy or targeting issue.
Has anyone run into something similar? We had outbound campaigns that were getting replies consistently, but then replies suddenly dropped off. We started investigating and found that: - most of our Google Workspace domains are listed in SURBL; - Microsoft domains are listed in Suomispam Reputation; - even some brand-new Google Workspace domains (that haven't been used for outbound yet) are already listed in SURBL. All inboxes are warmed up through Instantly. Has anyone seen something similar? Could these blacklists realistically have such a significant impact on reply rates? I'm also wondering whether this could be related to Instantly's warmup network, especially since even some unused domains are already blacklisted. Or are we looking in the wrong direction? If you've experienced this before, what was the root cause, and how did you fix it? If anyone has seen this before and can point us in the right direction, we'd really appreciate it. We've been trying to get to the bottom of this for weeks.🥲
Hi everyone! I’m not sure if my idea is realistic, but I’d like to share it and see how it goes (hope this is the right place for this). I have several B2B SaaS leads who have already shown interest in the outbound I’ve been running. I offer Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) services for their websites. At this point, I’m looking for someone who can help turn these leads into deals. I’m offering performance-based payment - a % of the deals you close. I haven’t called these leads yet and only did some initial email follow-ups a few weeks ago. I believe they are still warm, and there are multiple ways to re-engage them. I’d love to speak with anyone interested in collaborating this way. (or even if you’re not looking to collaborate, I’m open to suggestions on how to move forward with this type of work — I’d really appreciate your advice.) I’m also planning to offer the same CRO services to another segment - e-commerce brands - but I haven’t started lead generation there yet. I’d be happy to consider a performance-based partner for that segment as well if I find the right person. thanks in advance !🙌
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