Our Stack of Choice (Hands Down…)

The infrastructure stack that we've decided on does most of what we need without the need to constantly tack on other tools. Here is what we use:

1. Gmail

2. Outlook

The staples. Use both. Diversification always wins.

But just here you have more than 4 different variants: you have Gmail and Outlook direct and Google and Outlook resellers, who usually offer better pricing structures, better support, or additional analytics tools to help manage your outbound campaigns. Each option comes with its own set of pros and cons depending on what you need.

If you do opt for a reseller, use a reputable one and specifically mention that you want US-based accounts and not to share workspaces with other clients of theirs. If they are charging you less than a couple of bucks per mailbox, it's probably not based in the US, and/or you are in the same workspace as other outbound folks, which will impact your deliverability.

Keep to 2-3 mailboxes per domain.

MailReef

If Gmail & Outlook keep giving you a hard time, Mailreef will back you up. It's another layer to your infrastructure. Diversification wins here. Typically you'd purchase a whole Server and have around 50-100 mailboxes on this server. It is your job to guard your IP reputation and you should take that very seriously, if it burns, it's your fault.

Domains

We buy domains from Porkbun and point them to Cloudflare, which is also what we do for most of our infrastructure, including Gmail/Outlook. Buy .com or .co (if you must). Add a simple word in front of your normal domain, such as GET((PRIMARY DOMAIN)).COM = GetZenMedia.com.

Clay.com

Clay acts as a centralised hub for all of our workflows, enrichments and deep personalization. It includes most of the tools that you'd need to find out what you need on any lead, and integrates pretty seamlessly with any other tools you might use. An absolute staple. 

OpenAI

There are a bunch of LLMs right now. Each has its particular strengths and offerings, but most also do roughly the same thing. We like OpenAIs API because it's cheap, sound, and integrates well with most of the tools you'll use. Never pay a service for access to their OpenAI API – always use your own (most have this option). Their GPT4-o-mini model is really great and cheap. We try to use it whenever we can. In some cases, we will spend less than $1 per 10,000 processed contacts with 50% personalised copy written.

Make sure to pay attention to the amount of text going into and leaving your API – measured in "tokens". The more tokens in your prompts and the more tokens in the output (to a lesser extent), the more expensive it will be. For simple tasks, turn your creativity level to 0.0. For precision, use the Clay examples function. Start by running 5 rows, then 10, then 15, perfection is about iteration and prompt refinements.

SmartLead

Smartlead is a great all-in-one platform for managing inboxes and structuring campaigns. You can manage your sequences, set up A/B testing, and track performance analytics.

You should integrate SmartLead with your email infrastructure to execute campaigns with surgical precision. Warm your infrastructure for 2 weeks or 3 weeks (3 is better) prior to the first cold emails and always thereafter. Ignore the recommended 20% reply rate, set that to 2X or 3X.

Personally, we do not send more than ten emails per mailbox per day, or 25 including warmup.

OutboundSync

This technology designed by Harris Kenny connects SmartLead to Hubspot or Salesforce and enables smooth blocklisting and further multi-channel by centralising everything inside of your CRM.

CRMs

We use HubSpot or Salesforce or another (depending on what our clients use). Your CRM is the backbone. This is command central for all your data. This is where you should close the loop on your outbound efforts with powerful automation and reporting. Coordinate your reps to execute the human parts of this.