Scaling To One Million Outbound Emails

A tactical breakdown to grow your business

AuthorAuthor

Justin Gordon & Bill Kerr
August 18, 2024

Hey! Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders! Last week’s founder deep dive was one of my favorite stories, check it out!

Today we’ve got another super tactical guest post from Bill Kerr the founder and CEO of Athyna and author of Open Source CEO.

Hire the best remote talent, for 70% less

“We need a front-end developer for Tuesday, but it will take months to find someone in the US.” If you are looking for your next remote hire, Athyna has you covered. From finance and ops, to creative and engineering.

The secret weapon for ambitious startups. No search fees. No activation fees. Just incredible talent, matched with AI precision—at lightning speed. All up up to 70% less than hiring locally.

Interested in sponsoring these emails? See our partnership options here.

📅 Community Update & Upcoming Events

I hosted our monthly Just Go Grind: LA Startup Community Coffee Meetup on Tuesday and we had our highest turnout ever. This community is growing!

Upcoming events:

All #TechWeek events will be posted in their respective calendars below: 

Alright, on to Bill’s guest post!

What Would It Take to Send One Million Outbound Emails Daily?

Let me tell you the story behind Athyna’s email outbound strategy—a journey of ambition, persistence, and a relentless pursuit of the perfect cold email.

We began with just 50 emails per week, and now, we’re hitting 1.2 million emails a week with high-quality leads at an average cost of $8-12 each.

Today, I want to share the strategy we used—the one that saw us transform our humble beginnings into an outbound powerhouse. Our journey to sending a million emails a day.

The Salesforce Legacy

Before we delve deeper into our story, we need to take a moment to appreciate the trailblazers of outbound email—the $247B behemoth, Salesforce.

This company, renowned for coining the term SaaS and essentially creating the CRM category, has always been synonymous with one thing: outbound.

The Predictable Revenue model, pioneered by Aaron Ross at Salesforce, revolutionized systematic outbound prospecting.

This model relied on dedicated Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) who focused exclusively on outbound lead generation.

Aaron Ross, King of Outbound and Cold Calls, introduced ‘Cold Calling 2.0’. This innovative framework emphasized generating leads through personalized and targeted outbound emails instead of traditional cold calls.

Aaron Ross.

Rather than pushing direct sales pitches, the strategy was to set up meetings through these tailored emails.

It was a brilliant shift—so brilliant that Salesforce’s strategies have been dissected and replicated by B2B companies from every corner of the globe.

The Genesis

It all began with a dream and a whiteboard, three months before Athyna officially launched.

My co-founder and I were in a cramped office, surrounded by scribbles of countless growth channels. Our budget was tight, our resources limited, but our ambitions were sky-high. Outbound email emerged as the beacon of hope—economical, strategic, and scalable.

From day one, week one, we rolled up our sleeves and started sending emails. Just 50 a week. It was humble, but it was a start.

We meticulously crafted each message, aiming to hit the sweet spot.

As weeks turned into months, our confidence grew. The response rate was promising, and the leads began trickling in. Each email taught us something new—what resonated, what didn’t, and how we could improve.

One Wrong Move and It’s Over

The secret lies in crafting the perfect message and delivering it to the right audience at the perfect moment.

Nail all three, and you've got a customer; hit two out of three, and you've generated a lead. Miss the mark, and you risk being labeled as the dreaded four-letter word: SPAM.

Scaling our outbound email efforts wasn’t just about increasing the volume; it was about maintaining quality and ensuring deliverability. As our email numbers grew, it became crucial to keep our messages landing in the right inboxes, avoiding the SPAM trap at all costs.

To achieve this, we implemented a strategy using sub-domains, each designed for specific audience segments.

This approach enabled us to send highly personalized emails while preserving our sender reputation. Every email we sent had to be relevant, timely, and valuable, ensuring it was welcomed rather than rejected.

Maintaining this balance was essential. We continuously monitored our email campaigns, making adjustments to maximize engagement and minimize the risk of being marked as SPAM. This ongoing vigilance was a cornerstone of our success, allowing us to scale effectively.

By focusing on delivering quality messages and precisely targeting our audience, we turned potential pitfalls into opportunities.

Up to this stage, we had scaled our efforts to around 100,000 emails per week. At that time, it was feasible to send between 500-800 emails per account per day, which was still the golden age of outbound email marketing.

But we were making 1 big—if not HUGE—mistake. We were sending all our cold emails out of a sub-domain (main domain was @athyna.io, sub-domain was @hello.athyna.io). We thought this was the right way to protect our main domain but guess what, it wasn’t. And one good day our whole system crashed.

With a mix of bad luck and mistakenly using sub-domains, we accidentally send a cold email to… drums please…. a blacklisting company. Satan himself. What happened? We got all our emails + websites blocked. We couldn’t even communicate with our customers. It was our Black Friday.

Luckily we were already planning on switching to a .com domain, so we were basically forced to do so over the weekend, with the massive help of our Tech OGs.

Alright, so if this growth channel had this massive backfire, time to shut it down, right? Right? Nope, time to dig deeper…

Our 1M Emails a Day Plan

We were really good at this. We were consistently getting high-quality leads for less than $20. We were just doing it with the wrong infrastructure, so we came back stronger.

In the ensuing panic, we planned to rebuild our system better and more resiliently. We created separate, siloed domains, accounts, and Workspaces for everything. This siloing created redundancy in our system. If something broke, only a fraction of our operations would be affected rather than the entire system.

It didn’t take long before we were asking ourselves, “How far could we push this? What would it look like to send 1M (yes, Million) outbound emails per day?”

“At first, I thought this project was impossible. But with some careful planning and execution, we saw it was actually doable.”

– Argentino Molinuevo, General Manager of Athyna

The genius stroke was not just creating new, separated domains, but entirely new sub-brands.

The sub-brand strategy offered two main advantages: scale and cut-through. Scaling an outbound machine beyond 200,000 emails per week with one brand is challenging, perhaps even impossible, especially if you aim to maintain engagement with your ideal buyer.

This segmentation allowed us to maintain a high level of personalization and relevance.

Additionally, the cut-through benefit was significant.

Athyna services various remote talent needs, from sales and marketing to finance, ops, product, design, and engineering. A generalized message from Athyna might not resonate as well as a highly specific one.

For example, a VP of Engineering at a Fortune 500 company needing Salesforce Engineers would likely respond better to a message from wehiresalesforcedevs.com with a dedicated niche website, than from a generic talent acquisition company. “Find your niche,” as they say.

With this strategy, we were able to find multiple niches with highly targeted brands and messages. We created and launched 15+ dedicated brands in multiple verticals: sales, marketing, e-commerce, engineering, finance, and more.

Note: We also have brands named after my brother Jack, Tino our GM, Cucu our Creative Director, and even one named after my dog, Ziggy.

Our sub-brand strategy allowed us to scale our outbound operations effectively while maintaining high engagement and relevance with our target audience.

Outbound Today

The landscape of outbound email is constantly evolving. February 2024 was a game-changer for all things related to cold email when Google introduced its new Email Sender Guidelines with major restrictions regarding daily volume and spam rates.

This forced everyone to; 1) heavily reduce email volume, and 2) keep their spam rates close to 0, or they’ll be moved to the dreaded promotions/spam folder.

Despite the growing complexities and occasional setbacks, we continue to refine and innovate our strategies to stay ahead.

The Rise of New Tools

The outbound sales tools landscape has seen a remarkable boom.

ZoomInfo, known for its comprehensive (albeit expensive) datasets, set the gold standard for sales intelligence.

As the tech industry flourished, the demand for efficient outbound strategies grew, leading to the rise of platforms like Outreach, SalesLoft, and Mailshake.

These tools have earned their keep, enabling sales teams to scale their efforts more effectively, heralding an era where quality meets quantity.

Source; Commsor.

This surge saw unprecedented levels of outbound activity across the tech sector. Companies of all sizes embraced aggressive growth strategies to stay competitive in this bustling market.

Amid this frothy environment, Apollo emerged as a game-changer. By making their system data accessible to smaller companies and early-stage startups, Apollo democratized—yes, the most overused word in tech—access to high-quality sales intelligence and outreach tools. This meant that even small businesses could target customers with laser precision.

Apollo’s rise coincided with the increasing importance of SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) and the growing reliance on outbound email as a primary sales channel. Apollo’s approach lowered the barrier to entry for companies looking to implement sophisticated outbound strategies at scale, previously the domain of mega-funded enterprises.

To adapt to these advancements, we’ve embraced new tools and technologies that enhance our outbound capabilities.

Platforms like Clay offer advanced features that help us stay compliant while maximizing engagement. These tools provide valuable insights and automation capabilities, enabling us to manage large-scale campaigns more efficiently.

Another valuable tool we’re using is RB2B. It identifies website visitors and the pages they’ve read, revealing potential prospects' intent. By enriching this data with their email addresses from Apollo, we create a new sequence targeting warmer leads who have already shown interest.

Crafting the Future of Outbound

The Importance of Network Development Representatives (NDRs)

The role of Network Development Representatives (NDRs) has become increasingly vital in our outbound strategy.

NDRs focus on building relationships and nurturing leads through personalized outreach. This approach helps us create more meaningful connections with our prospects, increasing the likelihood of converting them into customers.

Our new secret weapon: Personal Branding

We believe the future of sales will be led by those who can build their personal brand.

At Athyna, we’ve crafted an internal program to help our team boost their online presence on LinkedIn.

By creating valuable content for their audience, following best practices, and being supported by a group of peers, we aim for all our team members to expand their networks and skyrocket their visibility online. Your network is your net worth.

Continuous Adaptation

Our journey to sending 1 million emails a day taught us the importance of adaptability.

We continuously monitor industry trends, update our strategies, and implement new technologies to stay ahead of the curve. This proactive approach allows us to maintain our competitive edge and deliver exceptional results for our clients.

Leveraging Sub-Brands

Our sub-brand strategy remains a cornerstone of our outbound efforts.

By utilizing custom-built, uniquely branded domains, we can target specific audience segments with tailored messages. This approach not only enhances our reach but also improves our ability to connect with prospects on a personal level.

Future Prospects

Looking ahead, we’re excited about the potential of AI and machine learning in outbound email.

These technologies promise to further optimize our campaigns, providing deeper insights and more precise targeting. By staying at the forefront of these advancements, we aim to continue driving growth and delivering value to our clients.

Wrapping up

B2B sales is always evolving. What works today might not work in a few months. Who knows what it will look like in five years with all the new AI developments.

Will AI agents be dominating quota in the not to distant future?

Who knows which new tools and technologies will emerge to change the game.

The key is to stay ahead of the curve, go big when you find what works for you, and keep adapting to stay relevant in this ever-changing landscape.

📚 Recent Founder Deep Dives

In the past year and a half, I’ve written dozens of deep dives on world-class founders, sharing how they built their companies. These typically take 20-30 hours to research and write. The most recent ones are below:

💰 Raising Money for Your Startup?

I’m a Venture Partner at VITALIZE Venture Capital where we invest in pre-seed and seed-stage WorkTech companies - People-first, data-driven, BIG ideas that transform work outcomes.

I’m also a scout at Headline where we invest in Seed - Series B companies across consumer internet, SaaS, and marketplaces.

If you’re raising, reply to this email and let me know what you’re building!

Best,

Justin

Founder of Just Go Grind and Village Lane

P.S. Interested in sponsoring Just Go Grind and reaching 21,000+ founders, investors, and operators? Reply to this email.

P.P.S. Want to work with me 1 on 1?

P.P.P.S. Hiring? Check out the team at Athyna.

Reply

or to participate.