June 19, 2025

Email Deliverability: What Every B2B Marketer Needs to Know

57 minutes

#256 Email Deliverability | In this episode, Dan is joined by Sarah McNamara, Revenue Operations & GTM Strategy Lead at Vector, and Alex Fine, co-founder of Understory, an agency helping B2B SaaS companies scale with outbound, paid, and email. Both Sarah and Alex are experts in email strategy, specifically the behind-the-scenes mechanics that make or break your deliverability.

They break down what B2B marketers often overlook when it comes to getting emails opened, read, and replied to, and share practical tactics to improve performance across newsletters, outbound, and lifecycle campaigns.

Dan, Sarah, and Alex cover:

Why email deliverability issues are more common than you think and how to spot them early
The metrics that actually matter (hint: opens and clicks aren’t on the list)
How to protect your domain reputation and warm up inboxes the right way

If email is part of your GTM motion, this episode will help you reach more inboxes and stop your messages from disappearing into the void.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro

(04:25) - – Meet Sarah and Alex

(06:30) - – Why email deliverability matters more than subject lines

(08:45) - – How to tell if you have a deliverability problem

(11:00) - – The most useful (and overlooked) deliverability metrics

(13:20) - – Why replies matter more than opens or clicks

(15:45) - – Tools Alex and Sarah use to monitor deliverability

(18:00) - – Should you buy a dedicated IP?

(19:55) - – How to evaluate platforms for deliverability

(22:15) - – Getting sales to care about data hygiene

(24:45) - – Deliverability tips for small senders and solopreneurs

(28:51) - – Subdomains vs. secondary domains

(31:41) - – How many inboxes per domain is too many?

(33:46) - – Best practices for cold outreach

(36:36) - – How security bots skew your open and click data

(39:36) - – What counts as “spam” (and how filters decide)

(42:51) - – How to re-engage cold or inactive lists

(45:36) - – What to A/B test in subject lines (and when it’s pointless)

(48:46) - – How to build a healthy, opt-in list from scratch

(51:36) - – When to stop emailing cold leads

(53:51) - – Welcome sequence tips for engaged subscribers

(56:46) - – How to warm up a new domain

(01:00:06) - – Final takeaways and advice

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Brought to you by:

Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.

Consensus - An AI-powered interactive demo platform that lets you put personalized, self-serve demos on your site to turn anonymous researchers into high-intent leads. Learn more at goconsensus.com/exitfive.

Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive.

Convertr - The enterprise lead data management platform that sits between your lead sources and your CRM, automatically validating, enriching, and standardizing every lead before it touches your systems. Check them out at convertr.io/exitfive.

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