The Challenge: Flying Blind on What Actually Delivers
Your outbound campaigns are running across 50 inboxes, 10 domains, and 3 different ESPs. You’re sending thousands of emails daily.
But here’s what you don’t know: Which inboxes are actually getting responses? Which domains are burning? Which ESP combinations deliver to Gmail versus Outlook? Is inbox rotation helping or hurting reply rates?
You make critical infrastructure decisions—rotating inboxes, switching ESPs, buying new domains—based on gut feeling and anecdotal evidence. By the time you realize an inbox is dead, you’ve wasted weeks of sends.
The real problem isn’t email volume. It’s the complete absence of granular, automated intelligence about what’s actually working at the infrastructure level.
The Playbook: Build Your Deliverability Data Engine
You don’t need more data. You need the right data, automatically collected and intelligently analyzed.
This reporting platform is the definitive solution for agencies and teams running serious email infrastructure. Built on Airtable’s analytical power with n8n automation and Clay enrichment, it creates a real-time intelligence system that captures every response, categorizes it by ESP, tracks performance across every dimension—inbox, domain, sending platform, sequencer—and surfaces the exact patterns that separate high-performing infrastructure from dead weight.
Here’s the framework that transforms email infrastructure from guesswork to science.
1. The Data Capture Engine: Every Response, Every Dimension
The foundation is comprehensive, automated data collection across your entire sending infrastructure.
- Universal Response Ingestion: n8n workflows automatically capture every response from Smartlead and Instantly the moment they arrive. No manual exports. No delayed data. Real-time capture of every reply, regardless of which ESP, inbox, or campaign generated it.
- Automatic ESP Categorization: The system uses Clay enrichment to identify and tag the recipient’s email provider—Google, Outlook, Custom Mail Server, Mimecast, Proofpoint, OVH, and 20+ other ESPs. You see exactly where responses are coming from, not just generic “replied” counts.
- Multi-Dimensional Attribution: Every response links to sending inbox, domain, ESP, campaign, sequence, and timestamp. The system tracks the full path: your infrastructure → their infrastructure → response outcome.
From send to response, every data point is captured and structured.
Raw data is noise. This system transforms captures into actionable intelligence through systematic analysis.
- ESP Performance Matrix: See reply distribution across every receiving ESP. Discover that Gmail responds 3x better than Outlook from your infrastructure. Find that custom mail servers (corporate inboxes) have the highest meeting-booking rate. Make ESP-specific optimizations based on proof, not assumptions.
- Inbox-Level Performance Tracking: Track reply rates for every individual sending inbox on daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes. Spot when an inbox starts declining before it’s completely burned. Identify your top-performing inboxes and clone their sending patterns.
- Domain Health Analysis: Monitor reply rates by sending domain. See which domains maintain consistent performance and which are degrading. Make data-driven decisions about domain rotation and retirement.
- Cross-Platform Intelligence: Compare performance across Smartlead versus Instantly. Understand if certain sequencers deliver better to specific ESPs. Optimize platform selection based on your target audience’s email infrastructure.
Every dimension measured. Every pattern revealed.
3. The Time-Series Intelligence: Spot Trends Before They Kill You
Infrastructure performance changes over time. This system tracks temporal patterns that predict problems before they destroy deliverability.
- Daily Reply Rate Tracking: See reply rate fluctuations by day across your entire infrastructure. Spot sudden drops that signal deliverability issues, spam filter changes, or inbox burning.
- Weekly Performance Rollups: Track week-over-week performance for each inbox, domain, and ESP combination. Identify gradual degradation trends that wouldn’t be obvious in daily noise.
- Monthly Comparative Analysis: Compare current month performance against previous periods. Understand seasonal patterns, infrastructure decay rates, and long-term sending capacity.
- Automated Alerting: Set thresholds for acceptable performance. When an inbox’s reply rate drops below baseline, the system triggers alerts so you can investigate before campaign performance tanks.
Predict problems. Prevent disasters.
4. The Optimization Intelligence: Decisions Based on Reality
The ultimate value isn’t just seeing the data—it’s knowing what to do about it.
- ESP-Specific Send Strategies: The data reveals which of your sending ESPs perform best when targeting specific recipient ESPs. Send from Google inboxes when targeting corporate Gmail users. Use Outlook sending infrastructure for Microsoft-heavy industries. Optimize based on proof.
- Inbox Rotation Intelligence: See exactly when inbox performance degrades and needs rotation. The system shows average “useful lifetime” of an inbox before reply rates decline, letting you proactively rotate before burning.
- Domain Portfolio Optimization: Identify which domains consistently deliver across all ESPs versus which are ESP-specific. Build domain portfolios optimized for your target audience’s email infrastructure.
- Capacity Planning: Track how many responses your infrastructure generates per day, week, and month. Forecast when you’ll need to add sending capacity based on campaign volume and target reply rates.
Turn infrastructure data into strategic advantage.
The Bottom Line
This project is the definitive playbook for anyone running serious email infrastructure. It proves that deliverability optimization isn’t about buying more inboxes or switching ESPs randomly—it’s about building a data engine that reveals exactly what works, when it stops working, and what to do about it.
With comprehensive automated tracking, multi-dimensional analysis, and temporal intelligence, you can transform email infrastructure from a black box of hope into a measured, optimized, predictable system.
Stop guessing what delivers. Start knowing what works.
