Scaling email outreach without hitting spam filters is all about protecting your sender reputation while increasing volume. Here’s the key takeaway: sending too many emails from a single account, or scaling too fast, can get your emails flagged as spam. To avoid this, you need a solid email infrastructure that includes multiple domains, proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and gradual warm-up strategies.
For large-scale campaigns, tools like Infraforge simplify the process with pre-warmed domains, automated DNS setup, and dedicated IPs. This ensures your emails reach inboxes and not spam folders. Scaling is possible when done the right way - focus on reputation, infrastructure, and gradual growth.
Scaling email operations beyond a single account brings a host of technical challenges. What works smoothly for sending 50 emails a day can fall apart when you scale to 500. The challenges aren't just about handling more volume - they're about how email providers interpret your sending habits and whether they trust you enough to deliver your messages. Let's break down how sender reputation, account management, and list quality can threaten your email deliverability.
Increasing your email volume too quickly is a red flag for spam filters. If you go from sending 20 emails a day to 200 overnight, it raises alarms. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook monitor your sending patterns, and sudden spikes in volume often get flagged as suspicious behavior. It simply doesn’t look natural.
Another common pitfall is failing to properly configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. These records act as digital signatures, proving to email providers that your messages are legitimate. As Will Boyd from SendGrid explains:
"Email authentication gives mailbox providers confidence that the messages from senders are authentic and not sent by a bad actor".
Without these authentication protocols in place, your emails are likely to be blocked before they even reach the inbox.
Metrics like hard bounce rates and spam complaints also play a critical role in reputation management. A hard bounce rate above 1% signals poor data quality, while spam complaint rates exceeding 0.1% can severely damage your standing with ISPs. Using your primary business domain for cold outreach is particularly risky - if it gets blacklisted, you could lose access to essential email functions like sending invoices or responding to customer support inquiries.
Managing multiple email accounts introduces a new layer of complexity. Each account requires its own authentication setup, warm-up schedule, and ongoing monitoring. The more accounts you add, the higher the chances of errors.
Things get trickier when dealing with IP or browser fingerprinting. If all your accounts are tied to the same IP address or accessed from the same browser, it can look suspicious to email providers. To make matters worse, many B2B prospects use Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) like Barracuda or Mimecast. These systems require specialized routing and slower warm-up periods to ensure your emails make it through. Without the right infrastructure, scaling becomes an uphill battle.
Poor-quality contact lists are another major obstacle to scaling email accounts. For example, Brian Dean saw his campaign open rates jump from 19.9% to 28.3% after cleaning his list and removing 35.5% of inactive subscribers. This highlights how critical it is to maintain a clean, engaged contact list.
High bounce rates indicate to email service providers (ESPs) that you're not taking care of your lists. Pair that with improperly configured domains, and you're setting yourself up for failure. Each bounce and spam complaint chips away at your sender reputation, creating a snowball effect that makes it increasingly difficult to land in your recipients' inboxes. Once this downward spiral begins, recovering your deliverability can be a long and painful process.
Email Warmup Schedule: 4-Week Strategy for Scaling Cold Outreach
To scale email outreach effectively, you need more than just additional accounts. A solid email infrastructure combines authentication, gradual warmup, and private resource control. These elements work together to establish credibility with email providers, manage volume increases naturally, and protect your sender reputation.
Every outreach domain must have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to verify its legitimacy. Manually setting up DNS records can be time-consuming and prone to mistakes, especially when managing multiple domains. Automation tools can simplify this process. For instance, Jimmy Durant, who runs a lead-generation agency, managed to configure 10 inboxes with full DNS authentication in just 10 minutes using automated tools. Similarly, Kostas Zhukov, Founder & CEO of ChatPoint, shared how automation reduced the time required for setting up records like DKIM and SPF from hours to just minutes. This automation not only saves time but also reduces human error, ensuring all domains are authenticated correctly from the start.
Using dedicated IPs adds another layer of control. Unlike shared IPs, where your email reputation can be affected by others, dedicated IPs give you full ownership of your sender reputation. For high-volume senders - those sending more than 5,000 emails daily - this isolation is essential to maintain consistent deliverability.
Once your authentication is set, the next step is to gradually warm up your infrastructure to build trust with email providers.
Jumping from zero to hundreds of emails per day is a surefire way to get flagged by spam filters. Email providers monitor sending patterns closely, and sudden spikes can harm your reputation. Instead, start small - around 10 emails per day in the first week - and increase gradually over 4–8 weeks. Below is an example of a conservative warmup schedule:
| Week | Daily Warmup Emails | Daily Cold Emails | Total Daily Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Week 2 | 15 | 5 | 20 |
| Week 3 | 15 | 10 | 25 |
| Week 4 | 20 | 10 | 30 |
Using an adjacent domain strategy can also help protect your primary domain. For instance, instead of sending cold emails from yourcompany.com, you could use domains like getyourcompany.com or tryyourcompany.com. This approach allows you to scale safely while shielding your main domain from potential risks.
Once warmed up, private infrastructure provides the control needed for large-scale email campaigns.
Private email infrastructure, equipped with dedicated IPs, offers complete control over your sender reputation. Unlike shared systems, where one sender’s poor practices can harm everyone, private infrastructure isolates your reputation, ensuring it remains unaffected by others.
| Feature | Shared IP | Private/Dedicated IP |
|---|---|---|
| Reputation | Shared by all users | Fully under your control |
| Setup | Instant | Requires 4–8 week warmup |
| Volume | Low to moderate | High-volume (>5k/day) |
| Risk | Affected by others' actions | Isolated; full control |
One standout example is UniteSync, a company led by CEO Carlos Palop Moliner. In 2025, they implemented distributed email infrastructure with automated deliverability tools, achieving an impressive 85.26% positive reply rate and a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of just $2.86. This kind of performance highlights the potential of having full control over your email infrastructure, allowing you to optimize for deliverability and scale effectively.
Once your infrastructure is warmed up, it's crucial to maintain clean lists and keep a close eye on deliverability. This helps prevent issues like bounces, spam complaints, and declining engagement levels.
To keep your email lists in top shape, clean them weekly to remove invalid addresses and monthly to weed out inactive subscribers. Segment your contacts based on their engagement levels - send emails to your most active segments using your cleanest domains, while reserving "buffer" domains for riskier lists. This approach safeguards your primary domains from potential harm while giving you room to test new audiences. For example, in Q1 2024, OptinMonster adopted strict list management and verification practices, achieving a bounce rate of just 0.92%, far below the industry average of 10.29%.
Instead of manually checking individual logs, use a centralized dashboard (sometimes called a "Masterbox") to monitor metrics across all your accounts at once. This unified setup makes it easier to identify trends or sudden drops in deliverability. For instance, domains that are properly monitored and warmed up can achieve 100% inbox placement and reply rates above 80% within two weeks. Meanwhile, cold, unmonitored domains often struggle to exceed a 40% reply rate.
Keep a close watch on engagement metrics by domain and IP. If you notice open rates dropping or bounce rates spiking, rotate those domains or IPs immediately. Rotating domains can lead to a 25% improvement in inbox placement, while IP rotation has been shown to boost open rates by 15–20%. This centralized tracking not only simplifies account management but also sets the stage for automation.
When managing a large number of accounts - say, 50 or more - manual list cleaning quickly becomes unmanageable. Automation is the only practical solution. The table below highlights why automation is essential for scaling operations:
| Feature | Manual Approach | Automated Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Scalability | Difficult; relies on spreadsheets and manual logging | Seamless; handles hundreds of accounts via APIs and dashboards |
| Speed | Time-consuming; can take hours or days | Real-time; updates and cleaning happen instantly |
| Reputation Checks | Requires manual database searches | Provides instant blacklist and health alerts |
Automated tools streamline the process by consolidating metrics like open rates, replies, and inbox placement across all accounts in real time. This efficiency becomes indispensable as your operations grow.

Infraforge is designed to tackle the technical challenges of scaling email outreach by providing a custom-built solution. Unlike generic platforms, Infraforge offers private email infrastructure with dedicated servers and IPs specifically for cold outreach. This setup gives you complete control over your sender reputation, avoiding the pitfalls of shared providers like sudden volume increases or spam filter issues.
One standout feature is its automated DNS setup for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which takes around 5 minutes - saving you hours of manual work. You can also hit the ground running with pre-warmed domains and mailboxes, skipping the usual 2–4 week reputation-building period. For larger operations, multi-IP provisioning enables you to distribute sending volumes across dedicated IPs, reducing risks to domain reputation. Plus, the Masterbox dashboard brings all emails from your workspace into a single, easy-to-manage view, streamlining the process of monitoring hundreds of accounts.
For teams managing high-volume campaigns, Infraforge offers API access, allowing you to automate domain and mailbox provisioning while updating DNS records across multiple domains effortlessly. To keep your primary domains safe, Infraforge also includes SSL and Domain Masking, ensuring they remain hidden from public exposure.
Here’s how Infraforge stacks up against some other popular options:
| Feature | Infraforge | Google Workspace / MS365 | Instantly.ai | Smartlead.ai |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IP Type | Dedicated Private IP | Shared | Shared | Shared |
| Setup Time | ~5 Minutes | Manual/Complex | Fast (Connects existing) | Fast (Connects existing) |
| Warming | Pre-warmed available | Manual | Included in higher plans | Manual |
| Cold Outreach Focus | Purpose-built | General business use | Outreach tool first | Outreach tool first |
| DNS Setup | Fully Automated | Manual | Manual/Partial | Manual/Partial |
| Cost (200 Mailboxes) | ~$651/month | $1,200 - $1,680/month | Varies by plan | Varies by plan |
Infraforge boasts a 4.9/5 star rating, with users frequently highlighting its ability to simplify complex infrastructure without the need for technical expertise. Rahul Lakhaney, Former VP at Gartner and CEO of Enrich.so, shared:
"During my time at a Fortune 500 company and now across all our products, Infraforge has been my go-to solution for Email Infrastructure. Its deliverability and impact are unmatched".
This comparison underscores Infraforge's strengths in automation and reliability, making it an ideal choice for seamless integration within The Forge Stack.

Infraforge integrates seamlessly with The Forge Stack, a suite of tools designed for scalable email outreach. This suite includes Salesforge (for multi-channel sequences and AI-driven personalization), Warmforge (for deliverability monitoring and warming), Leadsforge (for lead sourcing), and Primeforge (for managed Google Workspace and MS365 mailboxes). Thanks to a unified ForgeID login, users can access all these tools without juggling multiple credentials, simplifying workflows.
In 2025, ChannelCrawler, a YouTube discovery engine indexing 200 million channels, combined Infraforge's private infrastructure with Salesforge and Warmforge to achieve a 100% inbox placement rate and an 85.71% positive reply rate. Co-Founder Jake Kitchiner commented:
"We've been running small campaigns because I want our email infrastructure to stay strong over a long period of time. But the warm-up process, spintax, and inbox management are all winners for us".
Similarly, UniteSync, led by CEO Carlos Palop Moliner, used the Forge Stack to scale outreach for its music creator identification technology. Their efforts resulted in a $2.86 Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and a 17% reply rate, with positive response rates consistently topping 50%. By integrating Infraforge's private infrastructure directly into Salesforge's sending engine, users can avoid complex manual setups while Warmforge keeps tabs on deliverability across all accounts.
A large portion of marketing emails never make it to inboxes, which highlights the importance of selecting the right infrastructure for your campaigns. Properly configuring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is non-negotiable. Using custom tracking domains helps protect your sender reputation by avoiding shared links that spam filters often flag. For businesses juggling multiple accounts, dedicated IPs offer full control over sender reputation, while automated DNS setup can cut setup time significantly. Gradually increasing email volume is another essential step to ensure consistent deliverability.
These foundational practices set the stage for scaling your campaigns smoothly.
Once you’ve mastered these basics, the next step is implementing a solution designed for cold outreach. The Forge Stack provides a comprehensive package: Infraforge takes care of infrastructure with dedicated IPs and automated DNS setup, Salesforge handles multi-channel sequences, and Warmforge keeps an eye on deliverability across all your accounts. Using tools like Infraforge ensures these strategies translate into improved deliverability.
Opt for infrastructure tailored to cold outreach to protect your sender reputation. Infraforge, with its 4.9/5 star rating and pricing starting at approximately $651/month for 200 mailboxes, offers scalable infrastructure built for businesses like yours. Check out their pricing calculator at https://www.infraforge.ai/pricing to find the best setup for your outreach needs.
To expand your email outreach efforts while steering clear of spam filters, it's crucial to stick to strategies that ensure high deliverability. Start by authenticating your sending domains with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These protocols confirm your identity as a sender and help build trust with email providers. Additionally, consider using dedicated or secondary domains specifically for outreach. Gradually warm up these domains - begin with 10–20 emails per day per mailbox and slowly increase the volume. Keep a close eye on bounce rates and spam complaints, ensuring they remain below 0.1%.
A clean contact list is another essential factor. Remove invalid or inactive email addresses and verify your lists before sending. Aim to keep your bounce rate under 5% to maintain a strong sender reputation.
When crafting your emails, focus on personalization to make them more engaging. Maintain a balanced text-to-image ratio, ideally around 60% text and 40% images, and test your email content for spam triggers before sending. Timing also matters - schedule emails to match recipients' time zones and stagger the delivery across multiple mailboxes or IP addresses to mimic organic sending behavior.
Tools like Infraforge can make scaling easier by automating critical steps. They handle tasks like pre-warming domains, setting up SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and monitoring reputation in real time. With features such as multi-IP provisioning and API-based mailbox management, Infraforge allows you to scale your outreach efficiently while safeguarding your deliverability.
Using dedicated IPs for email outreach gives you complete control over your sender reputation - an essential factor in making sure your emails land in inboxes instead of spam folders. Unlike shared IPs, where multiple users share the same reputation, dedicated IPs keep your activity separate. This means any issues, like spam complaints or blacklisting, only impact your campaigns and not those of other senders. The result? A stronger sender score and fewer risks tied to shared IP pools.
Dedicated IPs also shine when it comes to scaling. If you’re sending more than 5,000 emails daily (roughly 150,000 per month), having a dedicated IP helps you establish a solid reputation, enabling larger campaigns without triggering spam filters. Want to take it a step further? You can use multiple dedicated IPs to segment your traffic by factors like campaign type, region, or product. This strategy minimizes the chance of one issue disrupting your entire outreach.
Infraforge makes managing dedicated IPs straightforward. They offer automated DNS setup, pre-warmed domains, and real-time reputation monitoring - all for $99 per IP per month. This pricing delivers a scalable, efficient solution with built-in features like warm-up automation, which many alternatives lack.
Infraforge takes the hassle out of managing multiple email accounts by automating those tricky technical steps. With its user-friendly dashboard, you can set up new domains, create mailboxes, and handle SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configurations automatically - no need to wrestle with manual DNS settings.
It doesn’t stop there. The platform offers dedicated IPs, pre-warmed domains, and mailboxes, streamlining your workflow and boosting deliverability. Plus, real-time reputation monitoring and API access make it easy to scale. You can programmatically manage accounts and IPs, allowing teams to handle large-scale outreach efficiently without risking sender reputation or wasting time on tedious manual tasks.