Operator playbooks

Cold email infrastructure guides for agencies and technical operators.

Practical workflows for planning domains and inboxes, checking SMTP readiness, requiring seed-placement evidence, and exporting only infrastructure that is ready.

Agency operations

Cold Email Infrastructure for Agencies

A practical agency workflow for planning client workspaces, domains, inboxes, readiness checks, and sequencer exports without leaking credentials.

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Domains and DNS

Cold Email Domain Setup Checklist

A DNS and authentication checklist for cold email domains covering MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, alignment, and GTM readiness checks.

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Inbox readiness

SMTP Inbox Readiness Checklist

A readiness checklist for SMTP inboxes covering status, MTA assignment, SMTP and IMAP auth, credential metadata, smoke tests, and export blockers.

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Launch gates

Seed Placement Before Cold Email

Why GTM launch gates require fresh seed-placement evidence before first prospect traffic, and how to separate placement proof from SMTP smoke tests.

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Capacity planning

How Many Inboxes Per Domain?

A conservative framework for deciding inboxes per cold email domain using campaign volume, domain caps, readiness checks, and launch gates.

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Sequencer integrations

Export SMTP Inboxes to Smartlead

A readiness-gated workflow for exporting SMTP inboxes to Smartlead while blocking unsafe rows and keeping credentials redacted.

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Sequencer integrations

Export SMTP Inboxes to Instantly

A readiness checklist for preparing SMTP inboxes for Instantly workflows with conservative capacity planning and blocked-row handling.

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Launch gates

Cold Email Infrastructure Launch Checklist

A pre-launch checklist for cold email infrastructure covering domain age, DNS authentication, inbox readiness, seed placement, and launch-gate approval.

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Launch gates

Tiny-Batch Launch Approval Workflow

A go/no-go workflow for approving the first tiny batch of cold email prospect traffic using seed placement, readiness reports, and an explicit operator decision.

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Sequencer integrations

Inbox Export Readiness Workflow

How sequencer exports gate on SMTP readiness, why blocked rows return redacted reasons, and how to clear export blockers before provider upload.

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Domains and DNS

Domain Replacement and Recovery Workflow

An operator workflow for deciding when to pause, recover, or replace a damaged cold email domain, with approval-gated fixes and contained blast radius.

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Inbox readiness

Deliverability Incident Triage Workflow

A triage workflow for deliverability alerts: classify severity, contain the affected inboxes or IPs, diagnose the cause, and track recovery to resolution.

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Agency operations

Agency Client Onboarding Infrastructure Workflow

An end-to-end onboarding workflow for agency clients: workspace isolation, domain intake, DNS setup, inbox provisioning, readiness proof, and sequencer handoff.

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Guides are not launch approval.

Use these pages to understand the workflow, then verify each workspace with DNS checks, SMTP and IMAP readiness, fresh seed-placement evidence, launch gates, and export-safe readiness reports before prospect traffic starts.