inbox-setup

Inbox Setup

Overview

This skill configures every mailbox that will send cold email and schedules its first six weeks. The deliverable is a compact roster: one short row per mailbox (address, owner, provider, role, rotation group, warmup wave), one row per wave with its dates, and one block each for identity, signature, account settings, sending rules, reply monitoring and retirement.

It prevents four failures: brand-new mailboxes sending 50 cold emails in their first week; mailboxes with no named person reading replies, which loses the positive replies; a Microsoft 365 tenant that hits its new-tenant recipient quota mid-ramp; and an unaudited roster, where one bad mailbox drags its domain down before anyone notices.

When to Use

• "I just created 15 mailboxes, what now?"
• "How long do I warm up?" or "can we start sooner?"
• "How many emails per day per inbox?"
• "What name and signature should the sender use?"
• "Should replies forward to my main inbox?"
• "How does inbox rotation work?" or "when do I retire an inbox?"
• "We bought inboxes from a vendor. What do we still need to set?"

Use a different skill for nearby jobs:

Prerequisites

Authoritative Foundations

Workflow

1. Assign a named person to every mailbox

Each mailbox maps to a person on the team who reads (or has a teammate read) its replies; unread replies are lost meetings. One person can own several mailboxes across domains: [email protected], [email protected]. How many depends on how fast they answer replies. Details: references/mailbox-setup-runbook.md section 1.

2. Set address and display name

Address formats, rotated across domains for the same person: first@, first.last@, firstl@. Display name is the person's own name, Dana Ortiz. State the display-name rule once in the roster, not on every row.

3. Write the signature

Plain text: name, title, company, opt-out line. Use at most one link (the main site, as plain text), and none in step 1 if link tracking is on, since click tracking wraps every link in a redirect (Alex Berman). Template in references/mailbox-setup-runbook.md section 3.

4. Account settings per provider

DNS: the deliverable lists every record with its exact value (MX, SPF, DKIM host and key length, DMARC with a report address), from the provider pages in Authoritative Foundations; for Microsoft MX and DKIM targets, name the admin page that shows them. Schedule DKIM generation 24 to 72 hours after Gmail is on, and a dated step that registers and verifies every sending domain in Google Postmaster Tools whenever its spam rate is a gate.

Click paths and record values: references/mailbox-setup-runbook.md sections 4 and 4a. Mailboxes a vendor built: section 8 of the same file.

5. Reply routing

Replies arrive in the sending mailbox. The sequencer's unified inbox reads all mailboxes in one place and stops the sequence on reply. Do not set a Reply-To on another address: the sequencer never sees those replies, so stop-on-reply fails. If the rep wants copies in their main inbox, add a forwarding rule for replies only. Options: references/mailbox-setup-runbook.md section 5.

6. Choose the warmup path and group mailboxes into waves

A Microsoft tenant under 31 days old runs on 10% of its quota, so name the tenant's age when choosing the path. Mailboxes that start warmup the same day form a wave; the roster lists each wave's dates once. Reserves start warmup the same day as the first active wave, so a warmed reserve exists on the first cold send. For every Microsoft tenant, check before each ramp step that mailboxes x (cold cap + warmup) stays under the tenant's quota at its age. Tables, sequencer settings and the quota example: references/warmup-and-ramp.md sections 2 and 4. Raises above 30 follow the escalation test (section 8); a burned mailbox is retired and replaced from reserve, never re-warmed (section 9).

7. Sending window and caps

Sending days and hours are the team's choice, set in the recipient's time zone. Randomized gaps of 60 to 300 seconds between sends from one mailbox and 10 to 20 sends an hour per mailbox (Apollo). Daily cap 30 (Instantly), raised toward 50 (Alex Berman) only through the escalation test.

8. Rotation groups and reserves

Group mailboxes so each campaign spreads first touches across several domains; follow-ups stay with the mailbox that sent step 1. Reserve mailboxes stay in warmup with a cold cap of 0 from the first wave's start. Reserves: the sending plan's reserve share, at least one domain per rotation group so a promotion never leaves a group short (Growth Engine X keeps backup domains always warming and runs 50%); state the added seat cost in one line. A 1:1 backup doubles the seat bill. Rules: references/rotation-and-retirement.md.

9. Reply monitoring

Name the person who checks the unified inbox, the times they check it and the team's response-time target for positive replies, then measure time to first human answer. Opt-outs go to the workspace blocklist the same day, across every tool. Hand categorization to reply-handling.

10. Retirement rules

Write the conditions that pause or retire a mailbox before anything goes wrong: hard bounces over 5% after 200 sends (Alex Berman's critical line, Instantly's default auto-pause), with list re-validation from 2%; a 0.3% spam rate on its domain (Google); a provider suspension; or the person leaving the company. Steps: references/rotation-and-retirement.md section 4.

ScraperCity Implementation

ScraperCity does not host mailboxes. It feeds the ramp with validated lists, so a new mailbox's first 200 sends carry close to zero bounces.

Step A. check_wallet() before any paid call.

Step B. Pull only what the ramp can send. In the first ramp week (2 rising to 10 a mailbox on 12 mailboxes, Monday to Friday) the campaign sends at most 360 emails, so pull 360 prospects for that week:

query_lead_database(title="Head of Operations, VP Operations", country=["United States"],
                    minEmployees=20, maxEmployees=200, keywords=["logistics"],
                    hasEmail=true, excludeDelivered=true, limit=100, after="0")

Page with pagination.next_after until 360 rows. Lead Database rows count against the Growth plan's 100,000 new leads a day; no per-row charge.

Step C. Validate before the first send.

validate_emails(emails=[...360 addresses...])   # 360 x $0.00169 = $0.61

Send only valid; bounces above 2% hurt a new domain's reputation (Alex Berman). Treatment of every result: references/deliverability-primer.md section 5.

Step D. Seed the time zone split. Lead Database rows carry state and country; Local Business Database rows carry state, postal_code and country_code. Group prospects by time zone so each campaign's window matches its recipients.

Worked cost estimate for a 12-active-mailbox ramp (catalog price $0.00169 per validated email):

Week 1 sends are almost all first touches, so one prospect per send is the most it can use. From week 2 new prospects hold at 120 a day (the steady-state 360 sends / 3 steps) and the rest of the capacity carries follow-ups; rows not sent carry into the next week. Show this before validating.

Output Format

A Markdown roster following templates/output-template.md. Answer first: the title, then one line with the date and any stand-in names, then the Summary.

1. Summary: at most three sentences (the path chosen and its one reason), then the key-facts table (main domain, sequencer, active and reserve mailboxes, path, first cold send, full volume, steady-state sends). The path decision is written here only.
2. Sender Identities: person, title, mailboxes owned, reply backup; the address and display-name rules once.
3. Mailbox Roster: one row per mailbox with Mailbox, Owner, Provider, Role, Group and Wave only.
4. Account Settings: one row per setting, one column per provider in use, then the DNS record table with exact values.
5. Signature Block, exact text.
6. Warmup and Ramp Schedule: the wave table (dates once per wave), the ramp rows with campaign limits and gates, the dated setup steps (DNS, Postmaster Tools registration, warmup on, list loaded with valid rows only, gate check with the named placement test, first send), the warmup settings with Instantly's exact setting names, and the tenant quota check only when a mailbox is on Microsoft 365.
7. Sending Rules: the team's window, gaps, hourly and daily caps, time zones, tracking, each with its source.
8. Reply Monitoring: owner, check times, response-time target, opt-outs, routing.
9. Rotation and Retirement with numeric triggers and reserves.
10. List Feed and Cost only when the user asked for the list or its cost; otherwise the list is one dated setup step.

Economy rules (the checker enforces most):

• Each fact once. A date, gate or rationale that a table holds is not repeated in prose; no paragraph restates another.
• Every number names its source in the same line, by vendor and page: "above 90% (Instantly readiness guide)", "10 to 20 an hour (Apollo, Email Sending Limits)". A team choice says so.
• Each rule is written as a setting with its number. Leave out justification sentences, checks that came out "not needed", capacity arithmetic and warnings about things the plan does not do.
• Leave out legal content, vendor pitches, internal file paths, section numbers, skill names, agent tool ids and self-graded checklists. If nothing was run, say so once in the top line.

Quality Check

• Every mailbox row names the team member who owns it and a wave.
• Every wave has a warmup start and a first cold send at least 21 days later on the standard path, or at least 14 days later when the soft start is named with its gates.
• The go-live gate includes a named inbox placement test; reserves start warmup with the first wave.
• DNS records carry exact values; Postmaster Tools registration is a dated step.
• Instantly settings use the exact names: "Disable slow warmup" off for new accounts.
• Every daily cap is 50 or less (Alex Berman); cold sends start at 20 a mailbox or fewer (Alex Berman's 10 to 20; Instantly's slow ramp starts at 2).
• Reserve mailboxes show cap 0 for cold sends and warmup on.
• Account Settings name the connection method (OAuth) for each provider; Microsoft rows include the outbound spam policy and the tenant quota check with numbers.
• Signature is plain text with an opt-out line; no images.
• No Reply-To on the main domain.
• Sending window is set in the recipient's time zone.
• Retirement triggers are numeric and name their source.
• No agent tool ids, file paths or skill names in the roster; no fact stated twice; no justification sentences.
• python3 scripts/check-output.py roster.md prints PASS.

Common Pitfalls

Execution Artifacts

Related Skills

• domain-infrastructure decides how many mailboxes exist, on which domains and tenants.
• email-deliverability runs incidents once the mailboxes send and triggers retirements.
• sending-platforms connects the mailboxes and sets the campaign schedule in the sequencer.
• reply-handling turns replies into meetings.
• cold-email-copywriting writes the messages these mailboxes send.
• cold-email-strategy sets the daily volume the ramp grows into.