I keep reading about email delivery issues and how you need multiple domains and warm them up properly. But here’s the thing - I work with education companies and I see lots of teams in universities and schools just using their CRM platform directly for emails and they seem to do okay.
Still feels like taking a big risk to me though. I’ve been setting up separate domains with Outreach tools instead of going through our main CRM.
Am I overthinking this whole thing? What approach works best for you?
Been doing outreach for three years now and the education sector’s different from regular B2B. Universities and schools have more relaxed spam filters and better established relationships, so CRMs work way better there than other industries. But I screwed up early on - used our main domain for cold outreach and it destroyed our deliverability for normal business emails. Spent months rebuilding our sender reputation. Now I always tell people to keep outreach separate from your main business communications, no matter what industry you’re in. The risk isn’t worth the convenience, especially if you’re planning to scale up volume.
You’re right about that education sector advantage, but don’t let it fool you. I got comfortable with decent CRM performance there and tried expanding to other verticals - big mistake. The transition was brutal. Our sending patterns and infrastructure couldn’t handle stricter environments. What works in education crashes hard in finance or tech where spam filters are way more aggressive. Your separate domain approach is smart. You can experiment without killing your core business communications. I’ve watched too many companies completely rebuild their email infrastructure after they mixed outreach with transactional emails.
You’re not overthinking this at all. I learned this the hard way after switching from our CRM to dedicated outreach platforms. CRMs just can’t handle serious outreach volume without hitting spam filters. Our open rates jumped from 15% to over 40% once we moved to a proper outreach tool with warmed domains. Education might be more forgiving, but you’ll still hit walls eventually. Setting up separate domains feels like extra work, but it’s basically insurance for your main domain. Plus the tracking and automation in dedicated tools blow away what most CRMs offer.
it really depends on what ur doing. if ur outreach is low, crm can work but once u scale it can hurt ur deliverability. better to invest in separate domains, yeah it’s more work but in the long run, it pays off!
yeah, i feel u on that! crms can manage small stuff but once your outreach hits those high numbers, it can get messy. saw a lot of folks mess up their domain rep by mixing things up. stick to dedicated tools like apollo for outreach, much safer!