Outbound Infrastructure & Deliverability Health Check
Objective: Audit a B2B outbound email setup to isolate primary domains, establish secondary domain warmup protocols, enforce daily inbox quotas, and verify list deliverability below a 2% bounce threshold.
You are an outbound sales strategist at Freshworks preparing a new SDR team for cold outreach to IT directors. The team wants to send 500 emails a day immediately from the primary company domain. You must audit their technical setup, domain warm-up status, daily volume caps, and list verification hygiene before any campaign goes live.
Audit the technical infrastructure against the lesson's four-stage outbound model: separate sending domains, mailbox warmup protocols, bounce rate thresholds, and daily inbox send limits.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Zero cost spreadsheet for hygiene verification
Paid upgrades (optional, faster/deeper)
Enterprise-grade message delivery and tracking
The process
2 steps
Step 01 of 02
The lesson specifies using secondary sending domains (e.g., getacme.com instead of acme.com), warming them over 4-6 weeks, and keeping daily send volume under 30-50 emails per inbox to prevent domain blacklisting.
The SDR team proposes sending 250 cold emails per day directly from sdr@freshworks.com on day one. What risk does this create, and what is the required infrastructure fix?
Procedure
- Audit sending domain: verify that outreach originates from dedicated secondary domains (e.g., tryfreshworks.com).
- Check authentication records: ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC policies are configured and passing.
- Verify warmup schedule: confirm 4-6 weeks of peer-to-peer mailbox warmup with gradual ramp-up.
- Set hard inbox throttling: cap daily volume at 30-40 cold emails per mailbox.
INFRASTRUCTURE AUDIT REPORT Primary Domain: freshworks.com (PROTECTED - Zero outbound cold email allowed) Outbound Domains Configured: 1. tryfreshworks.com (Inboxes: 3 | SPF: PASS | DKIM: PASS | DMARC: PASS | Warmup: Week 5 (98% health score)) 2. getfreshdesk.io (Inboxes: 3 | SPF: PASS | DKIM: PASS | DMARC: PASS | Warmup: Week 6 (99% health score)) Daily Capacity: 6 inboxes x 35 emails/day = 210 emails/day total Risk Status: GREEN (Primary domain fully isolated)
Healthy
Secondary domain usage with SPF/DKIM/DMARC authenticated, 4+ weeks warmup completed, and daily sends capped at ≤40 per inbox.
Unhealthy
Blasting cold emails from primary corporate domain without warmup or exceeding 50 sends per inbox daily.
What this means
Primary domains carry business-critical transactional and client communications; risking primary domain reputation with cold email can blackball company-wide email operations.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| SDR proposes sending from primary corporate domain | Block sending and provision secondary domains with automated warmup before launching | 30 min |
| Deliverability drop or emails landing in spam | Pause sending, check DMARC/DKIM records, and reduce volume to 20 emails/day during re-warmup | half day |
Step 02 of 02
Hard bounces must stay strictly below 2% per campaign. Unverified lists with stale or invalid addresses rapidly trigger spam flags from Google and Microsoft.
An export of 1,200 prospect emails from an online directory shows 140 unverified addresses and 60 invalid syntax errors. What must you do before importing this list to the sending tool?
Procedure
- Import the prospect export into Google Sheets and check for syntax anomalies.
- Run the list through an email verification tool (e.g. MX record validation, SMTP handshake).
- Filter out all 'invalid', 'catch-all', and 'unverified' rows.
- Calculate estimated bounce rate: must be under 2.0% of delivered contacts.
LIST HYGIENE AUDIT: Q3 IT Director Prospect List Total Raw Contacts: 1,200 Verification Results: - Valid (Deliverable): 984 (82.0%) - Catch-All / Risky: 156 (13.0% - QUARANTINED) - Invalid / Hard Bounce: 60 (5.0% - PURGED) Approved Outbound Batch: 984 verified contacts Projected Bounce Rate: < 0.8% (Target: < 2.0%)
Healthy
List verification performed prior to upload; bounce rate stays below 1.5% and spam complaints remain under 0.05%.
Unhealthy
Importing unverified raw lead lists with >3% bounce rate, leading to ISP rate-limiting and domain reputation degradation.
What this means
Verification protects domain health. Discarding 15% risky emails preserves the deliverability of the remaining 85%.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign bounce rate exceeds 2% | Immediately pause campaign, purge remaining unverified contacts, and re-verify list | 30 min |
| Spam complaint rate approaches 0.1% | Tighten ICP criteria and remove scraped directories with poor data accuracy | half day |
Final deliverable
A complete Outbound Infrastructure & Deliverability Checklist verifying domain authentication, warmup status, inbox quotas, and list verification metrics.
See a reference example
Zendesk — Outbound Infrastructure Audit (Pre-Flight) DOMAIN STATUS: Primary: zendesk.com (Protected - No cold outreach) Secondary 1: try-zendesk.com (SPF: Valid, DKIM: Valid, DMARC: p=quarantine, Warmup: 32 days, Health: 99%) Secondary 2: get-zendesk.com (SPF: Valid, DKIM: Valid, DMARC: p=quarantine, Warmup: 28 days, Health: 97%) SENDING PROTOCOL: Max per inbox: 35 emails/day Sending window: Mon-Thu, 8:30 AM - 11:30 AM recipient local time List Verification: 100% verified via SMTP check, bounce threshold set to auto-kill at 2.0%
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Ensures complete domain isolation separating primary business domain from outreach domains
- Enforces daily sending limits of under 50 emails per inbox with 4+ weeks warmup
- Establishes pre-send verification ensuring bounce rates remain strictly below 2%