Primeforge Email Deliverability Results
Primeforge is advocating for 'ESP Matching'—a strategy where senders route emails through the same provider (Google or Microsoft) as their recipients. By diversifying infrastructure across multiple ESPs, marketers can mitigate the risk of domain burn and significantly improve primary inbox placement for cold outreach campaigns.
- ESP Matching aligns sender and recipient providers to boost primary inbox placement.
- Diversifying infrastructure across multiple ESPs reduces the risk of total campaign failure.
- Cold email requires infrastructure specifically optimized for outreach, not just standard business mailboxes.
- Automated DNS and mailbox setup are now baseline requirements for scaling outreach safely.
What changed
Primeforge has highlighted the growing necessity of infrastructure diversification for cold email practitioners. Their reporting suggests that relying on a single sending environment is increasingly risky as mailbox providers tighten filters. They advocate for a 'mix and match' approach to infrastructure to maintain sender reputation.
Specifically, the company emphasizes 'ESP Matching,' which involves aligning the sender's mailbox provider with the recipient's. By utilizing Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 mailboxes in tandem with private or shared infrastructure, senders can better navigate the specific filtering nuances of these major providers.
Why it matters for email marketers
For the modern email practitioner, this is a shift from 'set it and forget it' infrastructure to a more tactical, granular approach. If you are still running your entire outbound program through a single ESP, you are essentially putting all your eggs in one basket; when that basket gets flagged, your entire lead generation engine stalls. Diversification isn't just about deliverability—it's about business continuity.
Furthermore, this strategy forces a change in how we view reporting and budget. You can no longer rely on a single dashboard to tell the whole story. Managing multiple ESPs requires more sophisticated orchestration, but the trade-off is a more resilient sender reputation. It’s a move away from cheap, high-volume tactics toward a more sustainable, infrastructure-aware model that treats mailbox health as a core asset.
What to do about it
- 1Audit your current outbound infrastructure to identify if you are relying on a single ESP.
- 2Implement ESP Matching by segmenting your lead lists based on their email provider (Google vs. Microsoft).
- 3Diversify your sending domains and mailboxes to prevent a single domain's reputation from tanking your entire campaign.
- 4Review your DMARC, SPF, and DKIM configurations to ensure they are optimized for multi-ESP routing.
- 5Test a small percentage of your volume through a secondary infrastructure provider to benchmark performance against your primary setup.
Who this affects: This shift primarily impacts cold email agencies, growth teams, and B2B SDRs who rely on high-volume, personalized outreach to generate pipeline.
Original reporting by Primeforge. The analysis above is EmailVersed's own.
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