Outreach.io Warns Customers of Bulk Sending Changes

Earlier this week, Outreach.io, the email outreach platform, sent an email to their customers that has the sales world buzzing. The message includes new changes in email rules from Gmail and Yahoo, and how it will affect businesses sending mass email campaigns.

The Update

Here's the deal: Gmail and Yahoo have decided to tighten their rules on what they consider spam.

What does this mean for us salespeople? If your company is sending out more than 5,000 emails a day, you're now labeled as a "bulk sender." And this isn't just about those automated marketing emails; it includes every single email sent from your account.

Being called a bulk sender might not seem like a big deal, but here's the catch: if your emails get marked as spam or abuse too often (anything more than 0.3%), then Google and Yahoo will automatically block all messages coming from your domain. And as of right now, we don't know how long the block will last.

Why This Matters

This is a big deal for anyone who relies on mass email to acquire new customers. It's a clear signal that the big email providers are cracking down on email spammers, and want to cut down on email automation.

So are the days of blasting out the same message to thousands of people over? Well… not quite. But it will become more difficult.

What You Should Do

If you or your company are using one domain to blast 1,000s of emails every day, it’s time to rethink your email strategy.

Here are some things you can do:

• Send more personalized emails.

• Use multiple domains to send emails from.

• Send less than 60 emails/day per domain.

• Use warm-up tools to warm up email sending domains.

• Avoid using a lot of links in your emails.

• Use spintax to “personalize” emails.

If you follow the rules above, there is no reason to be concerned with the bulk sending updates.

What to Do For Your Organization

If your organization uses Google as its email send platform (ESP) and sends over 5,000 emails per day, you will need to authenticate your email with Google.

As per Google’s help section: “Starting in 2024, we'll require bulk senders to authenticate their emails, allow for easy unsubscription, and stay under a reported spam threshold.”

As long as you play by Google’s rules and authenticate your emails, there is no need to worry.

Outreach.io and Their Role in This

Believe it or not, Outreach isn’t dropping this bomb on everyone to be a little jerk. They’re looking out for their customer’s best interest.

Outreach.io is a leading sales engagement platform that’s used by 100'0’s of sales teams across the world. They were founded in 2014 and have been a leader in the sales tech space, enabling sales teams to manage their outreach and communication with customers.

The bottom line is that many sales teams live in Outreach on a day-to-day basis. Because of this, they need to be at the forefront of changes happening in the industry.

The good news? This change will week out the low effort competition, and force sales reps to get more creative. Fewer spam emails in email inboxes = more room for high quality emails.