Campaign Walkthrough — https://youtu.be/BAukbs40648
Forkeeps Cold Email Campaign Walkthrough
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Live walkthrough of the campaign dashboard — open rates, reply rates, and campaign performance across all 8-9 campaigns
The Client

Forkeeps — a brand that needed outbound to work at scale.

Forkeeps came with a clear goal — build a cold email system that could reach a large audience consistently, maintain high deliverability, and generate real replies from the right people. Not a one-off blast. A sustained, multi-campaign operation that ran week after week without burning domains or killing sender reputation.

The challenge with any long-running cold email operation is consistency. Most setups work for the first campaign and then degrade — open rates drop, domains get flagged, replies slow down. The goal here was to build infrastructure that could sustain performance across 8 to 9 campaigns over an extended period.

The result was a cold email system that maintained a 60% open rate and 9% click rate across 72,000 emails — numbers that most marketers consider unreachable in cold outreach.

Campaign Performance

The numbers — across all campaigns.

These are the real numbers pulled directly from the campaign dashboard — no cherry-picking, no best-case averages. This is what sustained cold email performance looks like when the infrastructure is built correctly.

72,000
Total emails sent across all campaigns
60%
Average open rate maintained
9%
Click rate across campaigns
2%
Reply rate — 64 replies last 4 weeks

The standout campaign — one specific sequence sent 16,000 emails with a 6% reply rate, generating 280 replies in the last four weeks alone. For context, industry average reply rates for cold email sit between 1-3%. A 6% reply rate on a cold audience at 16,000 volume is exceptional.

Campaign
Volume
Open Rate
Reply Rate
Replies
Best Performing Campaign Top
16,000
33%
6%
280
Overall Average
72,000 total
60%
2%
64 (last 4 wks)
Industry Benchmark
—
20-30%
1-3%
—
How It Was Built

What makes a 60% open rate possible.

A 60% open rate in cold email is not luck. It is the result of getting every layer of the infrastructure right — from the domain setup to the subject line to the send schedule. Here is exactly what went into it.

Step 01
Domain & Inbox Architecture
Multiple sending domains set up with full SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication. Each domain paired with dedicated inboxes and put through a structured warmup process before any cold email was sent. Inbox rotation configured across all domains to spread volume and protect individual sender scores. No single inbox ever sent enough volume to trigger spam filters.
Dedicated DomainsSPF / DKIM / DMARCInbox WarmupInbox Rotation
Step 02
List Quality & Segmentation
Every contact list was verified and cleaned before import — removing invalid emails, catch-all addresses, and role-based accounts. Lists were segmented by audience type so each campaign spoke to a specific segment with relevant messaging rather than sending the same email to everyone. Clean, segmented lists are the single biggest driver of open and reply rates.
Email VerificationList CleaningAudience SegmentationApollo.io
Step 03
Subject Line & Copy Testing
Multiple subject line variations tested across each campaign. Short, curiosity-driven subject lines consistently outperformed longer descriptive ones. Email body kept short — 3 to 5 sentences maximum. No long pitches, no feature lists, no corporate language. Every email was written to read like it came from a person, not a marketing team.
A/B TestingSubject Line VariantsShort-Form Copy
Step 04
Send Scheduling & Volume Control
Send volume ramped up gradually across each domain rather than starting at full capacity. Emails scheduled during business hours in the recipient's timezone. Daily send limits set conservatively per inbox to stay well within thresholds that trigger spam filters. Slow and steady volume control is what allowed the 60% open rate to hold across 72,000 emails rather than decaying over time.
Send SchedulingVolume RampingTimezone TargetingDaily Limits
Step 05
Campaign Management & Monitoring
Every campaign monitored daily — open rates, bounce rates, reply rates, and spam complaints tracked per domain and per campaign. Any domain showing degrading metrics was immediately paused and investigated before being returned to rotation. This active management is what kept performance consistent across 8 to 9 campaigns rather than declining after the first few runs.
Daily MonitoringBounce TrackingSpam Rate MonitoringDomain Health
The Results

What the numbers actually mean.

The numbers below are not from a single lucky campaign. They represent sustained performance across an ongoing cold email operation — the kind of results that only come from getting the infrastructure right and actively managing it over time.

60%
Open rate — 2x industry average
Sustained across 72,000 emails and 8-9 campaigns
9%
Click rate across all campaigns
Industry average is 2-3% for cold email
280
Replies in 4 weeks — best campaign
16,000 emails · 6% reply rate
72K
Total emails sent — all campaigns
Zero domain burns. Deliverability maintained throughout.
The Key Insight

Why 60% open rate is achievable — and how most people miss it.

The industry benchmark for cold email open rates is 20-30%. Most marketers accept this as the ceiling. It is not. A 60% open rate is achievable — but only if you understand what actually drives open rates in cold email.

Open rates in cold email are driven by deliverability, not subject lines. If your email lands in the primary inbox, it gets opened. If it lands in spam or promotions, it does not. The 60% open rate on this campaign was not because of a clever subject line — it was because the infrastructure was built to put every email in the primary inbox of every recipient.

The second driver is list quality. Sending to verified, relevant contacts who match the ideal customer profile produces dramatically higher open rates than blasting to a large unverified list. A smaller, cleaner list consistently outperforms a large dirty one.

The reply rate on the best-performing campaign — 6% on 16,000 emails — came from a combination of deliverability, list quality, and copy that felt personal. Three sentences, one question, no pitch. That is what a 6% reply rate looks like.

"A 60% open rate is not a subject line achievement. It is an infrastructure achievement. Get the emails into the inbox and the opens follow automatically."
— Sheik Oli, certified email deliverability specialist
Is This Relevant For You?

This build is a strong match if you are:

✓
Running cold email campaigns with below-average open rates
If your open rates are stuck below 30% the issue is almost always deliverability — not your subject lines or copy. The fix is infrastructure, not rewrites.
✓
Scaling outbound and worried about burning domains
Volume and deliverability are not opposites — but they require careful architecture. This system sent 72,000 emails without losing a single domain to spam filters.
✓
Running multiple campaigns for multiple audiences
The segmentation and campaign management approach here is built for running several different sequences simultaneously without cross-contaminating sender reputation.
✓
Looking for an expert to manage ongoing cold email operations
Cold email is not a set-and-forget channel. It requires daily monitoring, active domain management, and continuous optimisation. That is exactly what this engagement delivered.