Booked Solid · Episode

Vaibhav Namburi on Smartlead and How Cold Email Deliverability Changed in 2024

2024-09-08 · 19:31 · Cold Email Tools

Vaibhav Namburi, who goes by V, returns about a year and a half after his first interview, which was recorded on February 14, 2023. Smartlead has since been largely rebuilt, and cold email has been through several Google and Outlook changes. V and Michael cover what's new in the product, the biggest deliverability shifts of the past year, why variable copy now matters as much as infrastructure, and why every channel works if you put in the effort. V also teases what Smartlead was building next.

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Topics covered

What changed in Smartlead over the past year
Why cold email keeps being declared dead
Open tracking, SMTP networks and shorter sequences
Why spintax isn't enough anymore
Copy as the new deliverability lever
Marketing is platform agnostic
Smartlead's upcoming products and product philosophy

Key takeaways

Cold email moves in cycles. Every few months people say it's dying, there's a rough month, and then it works again.
Open tracking has been unreliable for a long time. Don't build your reporting around it.
Sequences are getting shorter: three emails instead of five, with any long-tail follow-ups spread over months.
Spintax is easier for providers to detect now. Emails that differ in structure, format and CTA hold up better.
Deliverability started with DKIM, DMARC and SPF, then moved to sending patterns. Now copy is the focus.
Better product vs better marketing isn't binary. You need both.
The best product ideas often come from problems people have simply accepted as normal.

Show notes

🛠️ A rebuilt Smartlead

V says the product has been turned "upside down" and pretty much everything has been rebuilt since his last interview. The master inbox captures all the data on Smartlead's side, so you don't need an external tool, and it runs on a real-time engine. The deliverability and sending algorithm has improved a lot, with a feedback loop to spot patterns. The API is much more efficient, and a lot of companies now white-label Smartlead through the UI and the API, including data companies that have built their whole email infrastructure on it.

Smartlead also added stronger analytics and improved its tracking and bounce detection. V describes the goal as being the single platform that solves the evergreen problem of email deliverability, which he believes will never go away.

🔄 Cold email isn't dying, it's cyclical

V says that in cold email, "every 3 months people will say it's dying". Then comes about a month of hell, and then people are back to smashing their goals. Michael points out that cold email needs more technical knowledge and more frequent changes than most marketing channels. You can't rely on just one of Zoho, Outlook, Google or GoDaddy.

V compares it to Facebook ads, which get more expensive every day. Outbound gets more difficult too, but in cycles, so some stretches are easier and some are harder. He thinks people love "it's dead" headlines because fear sells.

📉 The core deliverability changes of the past year

V walks through the biggest shifts:

Open tracking: Google's recent change is a big shift, though V thinks open tracking was dead long before. Marketers were the ones who pushed for it.
SMTP networks: more people are launching sending networks outside Google and Outlook. V calls it a catch-22, because the bigger these platforms grow, the more careful they need to be.
Shorter sequences: people are moving from five-email sequences to three. If you run a long-tail cycle, stretch it over a few months.
Soft selling and data-driven copy: spintax, which is synonymous copy, doesn't work as well because providers' AI can pick it up. Customized copy where emails differ in format, structure and CTA holds up better.

He explains why copy now affects deliverability. Seven years ago it was DKIM, DMARC and SPF. Once people sorted that out, the focus moved to sending patterns. Now it's copy, the hardest thing to change.

“Now, what they're trying to do is the thing that is the most difficult to change, which is copy, right?”
Vaibhav Namburi, 7:15

✍️ Variable copy, with or without AI

V says that people with variable copy tend to do better than people without it. That doesn't mean AI is the only way. You can write copy with enough variables that each email looks very different. His takeaway is that there's a big push on the copy you use and the SMTP network you use.

Michael agrees and says it goes beyond spinning text to changing structure. It used to be "this is the cold email that works, let's scale it". Now the question is how to get the same effect with completely different principles and structure. His highest-scale client has 30 versions of email A, and some are deliberately written in ways he knows don't work as well, purely for deliverability. It's hard and takes a lot of effort, and he thinks the people willing to put in that effort will win.

🌐 Marketing is platform agnostic

Michael says people often assume he dislikes cold calling or LinkedIn because he does cold email. In his view, marketing is platform agnostic. If your audience can be reached on a channel, it works. Social proof, a good offer, good copy, testing and effort work everywhere, but most people stop when they realize there's no easy way.

V agrees. Smartlead runs outbound, inbound, SEO, content, LinkedIn and advertising, and he'd even try billboards. On the old argument of better product vs better marketing, his view is that better marketing wins in the short term, and a better product wins within two to three years. A weak product eventually burns customers and hands them to a competitor. Michael adds that one of the first ways he ever got clients was printing flyers and knocking on business doors.

“It's not binary. Both have to exist because a better product will beat better marketing in two to three years time.”
Vaibhav Namburi, 12:11

🚀 What's coming next

V says he was happy when Google cut into open rates, because the timing suited a launch: a new product meant to make open rates a redundant metric altogether, by giving users transparent proof of their true deliverability. Smartlead also had its own sending platform on the way.

His product philosophy is to watch what customers do over and over without realizing it, then fix that. He points to Uber, which fixed the assumption that taxis were the only option, and Instacart, which fixed the assumption that you had to go get your own groceries. Open rates are an example in cold email: people just accepted that they mattered.

“The unconscious activity that we perform because we've accepted it as a reality are usually the best products or ideas and problems to solve.”
Vaibhav Namburi, 15:24

About Vaibhav Namburi

Vaibhav Namburi, known as V, runs Smartlead, a platform that companies use to send cold email at scale, generate outbound revenue and build pipeline for their sales teams. At the time of recording, he was running the company with a team of 38 people.

This is V's second interview on the channel. His first was recorded on February 14, 2023. DFY Meetings is a certified Smartlead partner, and Michael mentions in the closing blooper that they're one of around 30.

Episode links

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