It's always good to prepare yourself and your equipment before you start any kind of task. Outbound works the same way - you have to set everything up on your account in order to start sending messages and not to harm your domain's reputation and deliverability.
In the next few sections you'll find step-by-step instructions (and a couple of videos, too) describing the most important aspects of the technical setup.
The whole setup consists of the following steps:
1. Choosing the right email accounts for the Growbots campaigns
Firstly, let's make sure that you have the right email account(s) prepared to send your campaigns from. Once you've decided on which email address(es) you’re going to use for outbound, you'll be able to connect them to Growbots.
There are a few recommendations that we've arrived at when it comes to choosing the right email addresses:
Use your existing email addresses. This way you'll be able to hit the ground running fast with inboxes which are already warmed up and ready to send campaigns. However, if you don't want the Growbots campaigns to interfere with your day-to-day work, you can create new inboxes, just make sure to:
Use inboxes set up on your primary domain. Primary business domains have an established domain reputation - this way your new email account will not be starting from scratch. Thanks to this, you'll be able to start your campaigns sooner, and your messages will be more likely to reach your prospects’ inboxes. We will not need to spend the first couple of weeks warming up a new business domain to create the capacity for outbound campaigns.
Use emails under the name of a high-level decision maker. Our research shows that the higher the seniority of the sender, the higher the response rates - for example, CEOs will see much higher response rates than sales reps.
Make the addresses look good. First of all, it’s best to avoid using a team-based or role-based email address, for example, an email starting with sales@, marketing@, etc., as it can significantly decrease your results. It’s best to keep the address simple and just use the first and last name - you can't go wrong "firstname@domain.com", "firstletteroffirstname.lastname@domain.com" etc.
NOTE: keep in mind that if you created a separate domain specifically for outbound, it's very important to set up a URL forwarding to your company's website. It's highly recommended, because it makes your domain more credible, which can have some impact on the deliverability.
NOTE2: Your email account should have a profile photo updated! It is very important, as it makes your sender's reputation more credible, which also can improve deliverability, especialy if your email's provider is Google.
2. Connecting the email(s) to Growbots
To connect the email to Growbots, you need to log into your account and go to Settings → Integrations. There you can choose the integration option according to your email provider - Gmail, Outlook, or in case you use some other provider, choose the Other option. Once you connect the email, be sure to fill out your custom fields and signature, as well as turn on the email warm-up (more on that in the next section).
Here's a short video showing the whole process:
While connecting the email, make sure to set up your daily sending limits.
For brand new email accounts, we recommend to warm them up for at least 2 weeks before starting sending campaigns, and then send them at 30 messages per day. Monitor your deliverability (you can do that in your Warmbots dashboard), and if it looks good, increase the limits by 10-15 each week.
For emails that were already used, you can set the sending limits to about 50 and, similarly to the case above, increase the daily sending limits by 10-15 each week if the SPAM rates are low.
We recommend to keep the daily sending limits at 100 messages per day or less.
NOTE: If Google is your email's provider, it's very important not to send more than 100 messages/day.
You can read more about connecting emails to Growbots in this article.
Moreover, if you’re using email with 2 Factor Authentication, check out this article.
3. Warming up the email(s) using Warmbots
Important note:
Please note that from June 1 2023 Warmbots will stop warming up Gmail email accounts connected via our native Google integration. You can still enable Warmbots, but it will only provide you with the ability to monitor your deliverability, without the warm-up capabilities.
You can read more about the decision and how to maintain good deliverability in Gmail here: click!
Warm-up still works for Outlook and Other email accounts.
Warmbots is our email warm-up tool. With Warmbots turned on, your inbox will automatically exchange dummy messages with other inboxes connected to the tool, which will create a natural-looking traffic and will make your inbox a more legitimate sender.
You can connect your email account to Warmbots by going to Settings → Integrations, clicking Actions → Edit settings and clicking the toggle under Email warm-up. Make sure to up the number of messages sent to the maximum number.
Once you do that, log into your email account and set up the filter to filter out those messages - here are the instructions for Gmail and for Outlook. For other email providers, the filter is not needed.
Here's the video showing the whole process:
You can read more about Warmbots in these articles.
4. Setting up all the necessary DNS records
There are 3 DNS records which you need to set up for your domain in order to ensure your inbox is authorized to send messages from your domain: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. We also recommend setting up a CNAME record for safe click tracking.
First, check which DNS records are not yet set up for your domain.
You can check if the SPF and DKIM records are there by performing a GlockApps test. Just go to Settings → Integrations and click on Actions → Perform deliverability test. The test results will populate in another tab and under Sender Authentication will show if the domain has those two records set up.
You can also go to this website and enter your domain name to see if the records are there.
Once you know which records are yet to be added, log into your domain provider's website, find the DNS settings for your domain and add the records according to the instructions below.
The instructions are prepared for:
For Gmail email accounts, set up the following records:
SPF record:
- Record type: TXT
- Record name: @ (or leave it blank - it should point directly to your domain)
- Record value: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~allDMARC record:
- Record type: TXT
- Record name: _dmarc
- Record value: v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=90; sp=noneCNAME record:
- Record type: CNAME
- Record name: track
- Record value: trackgb.com
Setting up the DKIM record takes a couple more steps:
First, go to your Admin console homepage, go to Apps-> Google Workspace-> Gmail.
Click Authenticate email. Your primary domain is selected by default. Click on your primary domain name and select another domain where you’ll be using DKIM.
Click on Generate new record and the following options will be displayed:
Select DKIM key bit length —If your domain host doesn't support 2048-bit keys, change the key length to 1024.
Prefix selector—The default prefix selector for the Gmail domain key is google. We recommend keeping it as it is.
Click Generate.
Now log in to your DNS provider and go to the DNS management tab:
Add a new TXT record including the data generated in your Google Admin page in the previous step:
In the Name field, enter the text displayed in the Google Admin console under ‘DNS Host name’.
In the Value field, enter the text string displayed in the Google Admin console under ‘TXT record value’.
Save your changes.
Turn on DKIM signing in Google Admin Console to start adding a DKIM signature to all your outgoing messages:
From the Admin console homepage, go to Apps->Google Workspace->Gmail.
Click Authenticate email.
Select the domain where you want to start email signing. The page displays the status of email signing for the selected domain.
Click Start authentication. When the DKIM setup is complete, "Authenticating email" displays.
Here's a video showing how to set up the DNS records for Gmail and Cloudflare (the process is very similar for other domain providers):
Note: it's possible you already have a DKIM record set up, but you're using a more custom selector which our app does not detect. Then the app will give you the notification about DKIM not being set up. If you're sure you have it set up, you can ignore this notification.
For Outlook email accounts, set up the following records:
SPF record:
- Record type: TXT
- Record name: @ (or leave it blank - it should point directly to your domain)
- Record value: v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -allDMARC record:
- Record type: TXT
- Record name: _dmarc
- Record value: v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=90; sp=noneCNAME record:
- Record type: CNAME
- Record name: track
- Record value: trackgb.com
Setting up the DKIM record takes a couple more steps:
Log in to https://security.microsoft.com/dkimv2
Click on the custom domain you're setting up the DNS records for. In the details flyout that appears, change the Sign messages for this domain with DKIM signatures setting to Enabled.
Once you do that, a pop-up window will appear, saying that there is a Client error. This is good news - it also informs you specifically what two CNAME records you need to add in your domain's DNS settings, so read it carefully and use the information mentioned here to create the records:
Go into your domain's DNS settings and add the two CNAME records according to the pop up which appeared in your Microsoft admin page.
The two records will look pretty much like this:
1st CNAME record:
Record type: CNAME
Record name: selector1._domainkey
Record value: selector1-yourdomain-com.domainkey.YOURDOMAINGUID.onmicrosoft.com
2nd CNAME record:
Record type: CNAME
Record name: selector2._domainkey
Record value: selector2-yourdomain-com.domainkey.YOURDOMAINGUID.onmicrosoft.com
Once the two records are added, go back to this page, click on the domain once again and click the toggle to enable DKIM signing. Once you do that, make sure to click on Rotate DKIM keys at the bottom of the flyout (it might be necessary to refresh the page first).
Here's a video showing how to set up the DNS records for Outlook and GoDaddy (the process is very similar for other domain providers):
For other email providers, use the following instructions to set up the DNS records:
Find out who your domain provider is.
Locate your domain management page.
Go to the DNS records section.
Add SPF, DKIM, DMARC and CNAME records according to the instructions below:
SPF:
Create your SPF: For other mailbox providers, the fastest way to check how SPF should look will be by searching on the Internet. The general rule is:
a. Start with v=spf1 and add the IP addresses that are authorized to send emails. For example, v=spf1 ip4:1.2.3.4 ip4:2.3.4.5
b.If you use a third party to send messages on your behalf, you have to add an “include” part in your SPF record (for example, include:third_party.com)
c. End your record with an “~all” or “-all” part.
Here’s an example of a correct SPF:
v=spf1 ip4:1.2.3.4 ip4:2.3.4.5 include:thirdparty.com -all
Publish your SPF: This step varies depending on your domain provider. The general instruction is:
a. Go to the domain settings.
b. Add a TXT record with the SPF that you created.
You can always ask your domain administrator for help with publishing!
DKIM:
Below, you'll find the guides to the most common email service providers (ESP):
For other providers (if no specific instructions were provided):
Generate DKIM: here are third-party tools that you can use to generate the DKIM record, for example, Sparkpost. Recommended selector: “dkim”.
Publish: You can do so by adding a TXT (or CNAME, for some providers) record with the generated DKIM to your DNS settings.
Note: it's possible you already have a DKIM record set up, but you're using a more custom selector which our app does not detect. Then the app will give you the notification about DKIM not being set up. If you're sure you have it set up, you can ignore this notification.
DMARC:
It’s based upon the results of SPF and/or DKIM, so at least one of those has to be in place for the email domain.
In order to set it up, simply go into your domain's DNS settings and add a TXT record in your domain settings with a name _dmarc and value v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=90; sp=none.
CNAME:
In order to set it up, simply go into your domain's DNS settings and add a CNAME record with the name track and value trackgb.com. Afterwards, go to your Growbots account, go to Settings → Organization, click on I have set up my CNAME domain and add the record looking like this: track.yourdomain.com.
5. Uploading an Exclusions list
If you'd like to make sure that some people or companies are excluded from your Growbots campaigns, the best way of ensuring that is by uploading a Do-not-contact list to Growbots.
First, prepare a CSV file.
If you'd like to exclude specific people, create a CSV file with a column named Email and containing the email addresses of all the people you'd like to exclude.
If you'd like to exclude whole companies, create a CSV file with a column named Website and containing the list of domains of the companies you don't want to reach out to. Make sure the domains don't include things such as "https:" "//" or "www" - the domains should look basically like this: domain.com.
Once you have the file(s) ready, log into Growbots and go to Settings -> Exclusions. There you can choose between uploading a Prospects exclusions list or a Companies exclusions list:
Just pick the right option and upload the list.
Keep in mind that the file cannot be bigger than 4,8 MB.
You can read more about uploading the exclusions list in this article.
6. Integrating your CRM
In order to integrate your CRM, go to Settings → Integrations and choose one of the options at the bottom:
If you're using Salesforce or HubSpot, just click the right icon and you'll be able to integrate the CRM using our native integration. Here our step-by-step instructions on setting them up:
If you're not using Salesforce nor HubSpot, you can try integraitng yor CRM using an app called Zapier. You can read all about setting up such integrations in these articles.
Once that's done, your technical setup is complete!