Professional services
CNTara.
Outbound rebuilt as an operating system: deliverability engineering, sequenced messaging and content that earns AI citations.
- Scope
- Outbound + email ops
- Timeline
- 6 months
- Squad
- 4 people
- Year
- 2025
The brief, in their words and ours.
CNTara had scaled outbound the way most firms do: more domains, more volume, more sequences. Inbox placement had fallen below 60% and the team was treating a deliverability problem as a copywriting problem. Before writing anything new we paused sending on the worst-performing infrastructure, which cost two weeks of pipeline and saved the sending reputation.
The challenge
CNTara sent high volumes of cold email into worsening inbox placement. Domains were burning, replies were falling, and nobody could separate a messaging problem from an infrastructure one.
What we shipped
- Rebuilt sending infrastructure with authentication and warming policy
- Trigger-based segmentation and sequence library
- Reply classification and deliverability monitoring dashboard
- GEO content programme for AI answer-engine citations
How we worked
- 01
Fix the plumbing first
Domain and inbox architecture, authentication, warming schedules and volume ceilings were rebuilt before a single new sequence went out.
- 02
Segment before writing
Lists were rebuilt around buying triggers, so messaging could be specific enough to earn a reply.
- 03
Publish citable material
Entity-consistent, source-formatted content gave answer engines something accurate to quote when prospects researched the firm.
- 04
Run it as an operation
Weekly deliverability review, reply classification and sequence retirement turned outbound into a maintained system.
How the engagement actually ran.
Every phase ended with something shipped and something measured. Nothing waited for a big-bang launch.
Before and after
| Measure | At kickoff | After |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox placement | 58% | 96% |
| Qualified reply rate | 0.4% | 1.5% |
| Meetings per month | 17 | 27 |
| Domains burned per quarter | 3–4 | 0 |
Beyond launch
CNTara runs the operation with two internal owners and a documented weekly checklist. We hold a monthly review of placement and reply quality, and rebuild segments each quarter.
Services on this engagement
- Email infrastructure
- Outbound operations
- GEO / AI visibility
- Content strategy
- CRM instrumentation
“They treated deliverability as engineering rather than a growth hack. That is the reason the numbers held up six months later.”
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