<h2>Why should I set up a new &ldquo;burner&rdquo; domain before starting to email cold leads?</h2>
The first thing you need when you are planning to start with cold outreach is to set up a new domain and mailbox that is separate from the existing one you use to communicate with your team and clients. The main reason for doing so is to protect your main domain from any potential impact on its reputation. What happens if a domain&rsquo;s reputation is bad? Spam filters block emails sent from those domains, land them in spam folders or even put the sender on a blacklist.
Just imagine how annoying it would be if your employees and customers are not receiving your emails anymore because they are landing in their spam folders. Be smart, don&rsquo;t risk it, and keep reading! Here are the steps for you to derisk cold outreach.
<h2>1. Buy a new domain</h2>
There are endless providers to buy a new domain and from an outreach point of view, it really doesn&rsquo;t matter which one you choose. Here are some well-known options:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.namecheap.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Namecheap</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://domains.google/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Domains</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GoDaddy</a></li>
</ul>
What does matter is the name you choose. Look for available domains that are close to your main business domain. This reduces the chance of leads being confused by different names. You could for example look for the same domain name but with another TLD.
For example, we are using talmore.io for our outreach campaigns and use talmore.co as our main business domain.
You can get cookie points for buying a second-hand domain that&rsquo;s one year old or even older. To spam filters, domain age matters. They are especially suspicious of fresh domains used for outreach. This makes a lot of sense since spammers tend to use newly created domains. So in general, the older the domain, the better. But don&rsquo;t forget to check the domain&rsquo;s reputation before buying it.
You can use tools like <a href="https://talosintelligence.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Talos</a> and <a href="https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MX Toolbox</a> to find out the domain&rsquo;s reputation and whether it&rsquo;s blacklisted.
<h2>2. Connect domain &amp; email hosting server</h2>
Now we need to point your new outreach domain to the email server of your choice. If your domain and hosting come from the same provider you can usually connect them with a few clicks. If you bought your domain from a different provider than the email hosting then you have to follow the steps below:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Copy the nameservers from your email hoster</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Log into your domain provider</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Go to your DNS settings</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Paste the nameservers and save</li>
</ol>
Here are some guides in case you are using Google Worksuite as your email provider:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F87127%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_event=welcome&amp;assistant_id=gsuitemxrecords-gixvmm&amp;product_context=87127&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Namecheap</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F87127%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_event=welcome&amp;assistant_id=gsuitemxrecords-gixvmm&amp;product_context=87127&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Domains</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F87127%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_event=welcome&amp;assistant_id=gsuitemxrecords-gixvmm&amp;product_context=87127&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GoDaddy</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>3. Set up redirect for outreach domain</h2>
Leads might be curious and visit the domain after receiving an email from you. To make sure that they don&rsquo;t end up on a 404 or this domain is parked website we should set up a redirect to our main domain. Here are some guides on how to set up redirects for your domain:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Namecheap</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Google Domains</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">GoDaddy</li>
</ul>
<h2>4. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records</h2>
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are security mechanisms that prevent scammers from sending forged emails on your behalf. Setting these up in the DNS records of your domain will increase the chance that emails from your domain are successfully delivered to leads&rsquo; inboxes and your domain&rsquo;s reputation stays intact.
<h3>Setting up SPF</h3>
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a security mechanism created to prevent spammers from sending emails on your behalf. The mechanism is all about communication between DNS servers. To simplify things: Let&rsquo;s say you&rsquo;ve sent an email to Carl. But how does Carl&rsquo;s DNS server know that the email was in fact sent by you? Without SPF records it doesn&rsquo;t have a way to know. SPF defines which IP addresses can be used to send emails from your domain.
Here are some guides for well-known email providers:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F33786%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_id=generic-unu&amp;product_context=33786&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Worksuite</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-authentication-spf-configure?view=o365-worldwide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/spf-configuration.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zoho</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Setting up DKIM</h3>
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) standard has been created for the same reason as SPF. It&rsquo;s a way to additionally sign your emails in a way that will allow the recipient&rsquo;s server to check if the sender was really you or not. By setting DKIM on your DNS server, you&rsquo;re adding an additional way to tell your receivers &ldquo;yes, this email is really from me&rdquo;.The whole idea is based on encrypting and decrypting the additional signature, put in the [header](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22454?hl=en) of your message. To make that possible, you need to have two keys:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the private key (which is unique to your domain and available exclusively to you. It allows you to encrypt your signature in the header of your messages.)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">the public key (which you add to your DNS records using the DKIM standard, in order to allow your recipient&rsquo;s server to retrieve it and decrypt your hidden signature from the header of your message).</li>
</ol>
Here are some guides for well-known email providers:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F174124%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_id=generic-unu&amp;product_context=174124&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Worksuite</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-authentication-dkim-configure?view=o365-worldwide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/dkim-configuration.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zoho</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Setting up DMARC</h3>
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is a protocol that is used to authenticate email messages and prevent domain spoofing and email phishing.&nbsp;
DMARC records are used to instruct email-receiving servers on how to handle emails that fail DMARC authentication. They are added to the DNS (Domain Name System) records of the sender's domain and contain information on how to handle emails that fail SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and/or DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) checks.
Here are some guides for well-known email providers:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?hl=en&amp;article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.google.com%2Fa%2Fanswer%2F2466563%3Fhl%3Den&amp;assistant_id=generic-unu&amp;product_context=2466563&amp;product_name=UnuFlow&amp;trigger_context=a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Worksuite</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-authentication-dmarc-configure?view=o365-worldwide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/adminconsole/dmarc-policy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zoho</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>5. Warm up your new domain and email address</h2>
Newly created domains have a neutral reputation by default. This means that spam filters will keep a close eye on it and could be alarmed when you suddenly send a large number of emails. A domain must earn a good reputation by sending and receiving emails first before you start sending emails at scale.
The process of increasing email communication over time for a new domain is called domain warmup. The idea is to send just a few emails a day from your outbound mailbox to addressees who you know will respond to you (e.g. family, friends, or colleagues). Keep in mind that if you have more than one mailbox on this domain, you have to warm up each of them separately.
We suggest you send 5-10 emails a day and increase the number slowly over time. To be sure that a domain is fully warmed up this domain warmup phase should last about three months.
There are a handful of tools out there that help you with warming up your email mailbox by sending, receiving, and replying to emails within their customer base. This allows them to monitor how many emails end up in spam and adjust the number of emails being sent over time. Beginning of 2023 Google started to crack down on all those services and it is becoming harder and harder to use tools to warm up email mailboxes using Google Worksuite these days.
Here are a few options:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://woodpecker.co/email-warm-up/?trk=cold_email_features-warmup_section-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Woodpecker</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.lemwarm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lemwarm</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.warmupinbox.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Warmupinbox</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.warmbox.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Warmbox</a></li>
</ul>
While your domain is warming up, there are a few things you should take care of:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Building a prospect base (incl. Sales Signals)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Setting up a sequencing tool</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Drafting email sequences</li>
</ol>

A step-by-step guide on how to properly set up a separate domain and mailbox for your cold emailing and outbound campaigns.

How to Set up a Domain and Mailbox for Cold Email Outreach?

Despite (maybe even due to) COVID-19 shaking things up, the job market is hot, and companies continue to compete for the best talents out there. A great team with talented, high-performing people is the key asset fueling your company&rsquo;s growth. While the objective of building a talented team hasn&rsquo;t changed for organizations, the way they achieve it has - massively. Let&rsquo;s take a look at some key strategies, businesses are using:
<h5>Newspapers &amp; Professional Magazines</h5>
Until not too long ago, posting job ads in newspapers or professional magazines was a great way to reach large audiences. But only a fraction of readers were actually potential hires. The channels lack proper targeting. Thus, the ROI on these methods can be dreadful.
<h5>Referrals &amp; Internal Recruiting</h5>
Have an open position in your team? Ask your friend you have worked with before. You know that she delivers and that she would have a great cultural fit within your organization as well. Or promote a high-performing Junior. Recruiting internally has been shown to be one of the most effective recruiting methods over the years. But let&rsquo;s face it: Especially in growth stage companies, relying on your network and existing employees alone is not enough. You won&rsquo;t be able to fill all your vacancies without reaching out to candidates outside your company and beyond your current network.
<h5>Job Listings on Platforms &amp; Professional Networks</h5>
Posting on job platforms like Indeed and Monster or on professional networks such as LinkedIn and XING has many similarities with traditional publishers like in newspapers. While there is also only minimal targeting when posting the job, the platforms offer filters making it easier for active job seekers to find vacancies relevant to them - but what about the ones that are open for new opportunities but not actively looking for a new job yet?&nbsp;
<h3>Active vs. Passive Job Seekers</h3>
According to a LinkedIn&nbsp;<a href="https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/Ultimate-List-of-Hiring-Stats-v02.04.pdf?src=aff-ref&amp;veh=jobs_aff_ir_pid_10078_plc_Skimbit%20Ltd._adid_615074&amp;trk=jobs_aff_ir_pid_10078_plc_Skimbit%20Ltd._adid_615074&amp;clickid=UhORYVQSbxyOU7Z0OGSitWCIUkiR2nWf23oYVY0&amp;irgwc=1">report</a>, only 30% of the global workforce is actively looking for a new job, while 70% are passive, meaning they are currently employed and are not browsing job boards or sending their resumes out to companies and recruiters.&nbsp;
Furthermore, active job seekers aren&rsquo;t active for long. In fact,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ere.net/top-candidates-are-gone-within-10-days-so-assign-each-a-hire-by-date/">the most prolific candidates are only actively seeking for about 10 days</a>. That does not go well with an average hiring time of 20-50 days for most industries (<a href="https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/time-to-hire-industry">DHI study</a>, US).&nbsp;
So what does that leave you with, as a recruiter or founder looking for talent?&nbsp;
Even though the majority of candidates are not actively looking for new jobs, the same LinkedIn study found that about 9 out of 10 candidates - both active and passive - are open to new job opportunities. You just have to find a way to reach them. That leaves you with 2 essential questions:
<h5>1: How do you reach out to as many quality candidates as possible? (&rarr; Outbound)</h5>
<h5>2: How do you get as many quality candidates as possible to get to know about the opportunity of working with you and reach out to you? (&rarr; Inbound)</h5>
&nbsp;
<h3>1. Outbound Talent Acquisition: Active Sourcing - done right.</h3>
Networks like LinkedIn or XING give recruiters great tools to search for candidates. Specify the details of the position, create a search string et voila,&nbsp;your search delivered 1257 results. 1257 incomplete profiles with many question marks left for you to figure out: Current availability? Willingness to switch jobs? Future plans? Salary expectations? Get this information from 1257 candidates? Happy emailing!
Even the best and most efficient recruiters can only reach out to so many potentials. And oftentimes, the first tedious steps of the recruiting process (the sourcing and pre-qualification) just don&rsquo;t require their level of expertise. Their biggest impact happens when it comes to interviewing the candidates and evaluating their match with the company based on these personal interactions. It surely does not lie in reaching out to hundreds of candidates on LinkedIn asking for basic information and scheduling calls. But this is the reality for many recruiting agencies and scale-ups: Recruiters struggle with a lack of qualified candidates and spend too much time on filling up their candidate pipeline.
So what is the solution here? In order to maximize efficiency, recruiters should deal with high-value tasks only. Offload the groundwork like sourcing and pre-qualification. Shameless plug #1: With Scout&amp;Screen, we aim to do exactly that: Our active sourcers build your candidate pipeline and deliver pre-qualified profiles to you so that you are left with a hotlist of top-candidates waiting for your call. Sounds better than contacting, following up and vetting 1,257 on your own, right?
<h3>2. Inbound Talent Attraction: Don&rsquo;t Post &amp; Pray. Post &amp; Track, Analyze, Optimize</h3>
<a href="https://review42.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-social-media/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20average%20amount,and%2022%20minutes%20per%20day">The average European spends about 2 hours on social media</a>&nbsp;- every day (other regions even more)! That is 2 hours of opportunity to get your job opening in front of their eyes. B2C companies have long been leveraging the benefits of performance marketing on social media. They know which audience they want to reach and advertise their products and services with content tailored to the preferences of their potential buyers.
If you think about it, a position you are trying to fill is surprisingly similar to a product you want to sell. You are trying to create awareness for it, then interest and finally you want to convert your audience. Only this time, the button says &ldquo;Apply Now&rdquo;&nbsp;instead of &ldquo;Buy Now.&rdquo; By using social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram, you can reach your target candidates in an environment where they 1. spend a lot of time each day and 2. are attentive yet relaxed and open to new ideas. Highly targeted distribution and accurate tracking of the interactions with your posts enable you to allocate your budget in the most efficient way possible. Add machine learning to reach the people with the highest interest in the position and you will be able to reduce time- and cost-per-hire while at the same time ensuring a high applicant quality.
Key take-away: Post. But don&rsquo;t pray, at least not for the right candidates to come knocking on your door. Post and track your interactions with candidates, analyze your results and optimize your approach toward low-cost conversions. With BoostRecruit, we offer a service that allows you to do exactly that - at minimum costs and no additional effort for you (shameless plug #2).
<h4>So what now?</h4>
Look at your current recruiting setup and ask yourself: Are my colleagues and I spending our time on tasks that require our level of expertise and insights? Are we monitoring the ROI of all our recruiting methods? Am I satisfied with that ROI? Am I capitalizing on the opportunities that social media and performance marketing present for talent acquisition? If you can answer all these questions with Yes, then well done and happy hiring. If not, then now is the time to act. Your competitors might already be snatching the best candidates before you even find them.
Reach out to us to discuss how we can leverage outsourced active sourcing and talent attraction through performance marketing for your business or agency. Let&rsquo;s get things started together!

The times of posting your job on job platforms and hoping that the right candidate just comes knocking on your door are over. The answers: Active Outbound Sourcing and smart inbound talent attraction.

The End of 'Post & Pray' Recruiting

If you&rsquo;re a recruiter, manager, or founder, you know what value good talent brings to your company. Over the years spent building and working with startups, I&rsquo;ve learned it can often be the deciding factor of success. A good team is not easy to assemble, but once you acquire great talent, the network effects are extremely rewarding and effective. We built Talmore+ to kickstart our talent track in Europe and Southeast Asia, and now we&rsquo;re ready to grow the network and share this advantage with more companies.
Talmore+ enables recruiters &ndash; agency, in-house, and freelance &ndash; to focus on high-value tasks by taking over the groundwork. We specialize in two services: active sourcing and pre-qualification of candidates (Scout&amp;Screen) and smart candidate recruitment through performance marketing strategies (BoostRecruit). The solutions take away the burden of time-consuming, mundane tasks so recruiters can focus on interviewing and placing talent.
<h3>Origin Story: Why we built Talmore+</h3>
We built Talmore+ out of our own necessity. My business partner Miguel and I first met at an event in 2018, hosted by the Philippine Embassy in Berlin. We connected over our shared interest in the recently rising opportunities in Southeast Asia. We both recognized the growth of a young, digital-savvy population, but realized that the business side hadn&rsquo;t caught up to consumers&rsquo; need for innovation. We decided to work together to satisfy this &ldquo;need&rdquo; by investing into startups with potential success in Southeast Asia and by combining local A-players with experienced startup operators from other countries to build our own solutions and ventures from scratch. That&rsquo;s how we founded our VC firm, Unifier Ventures, and our venture builder, Litmus Ventures. What we needed next was a crowd of top-class talents.
I adamantly believe that a &ldquo;bad team&rdquo; with a great idea wouldn&rsquo;t be able to amount to much, whereas a great team with even a mediocre idea can direct themselves towards something greater or find the right opportunities to execute, adapt, and grow. If you can get the right people, with the right skills, into the right roles, you can build an unstoppable team.
<h3>Expanding the Network</h3>
Using Talmore+ we&rsquo;re better able to find smart, highly-skilled candidates to support us and our portfolio of companies. But how do we continue to pull in great talent? We&rsquo;re cultivating a win-win environment where great opportunities attract great talent, and that talent attracts more talent and more opportunities. To further expand and nurture this network, we&rsquo;re inviting other companies and recruiters to work with us and take advantage of our solutions. Today, we open our doors to everyone who is looking for more scalable recruiting processes and access to talent. Get in touch to talk about how you can use Talmore+&rsquo;s solutions to build your unstoppable team.

A great team with talented people is the greatest asset any company can have, getting you there is our goal. Read the origin story behind Talmore+ - why we founded it, what we do, and how you can benefit from it.

Talmore+ Blog | Recruitment