The “Cold Outbound Is Dead” clickbait we see all over social media isn’t new. And honestly? It’s not entirely clickbait either. Cold outbound is fundamentally broken.
Not because buyers are impossible to reach.
Not just because AI made inboxes noisier (although it absolutely did).
And not because “people don’t read email anymore.”
It’s broken because most companies are running outbound without governance, without a viable strategy, and without proper supervision.
That makes it a RevOps problem.
Hi 👋 I’m Camela Thompson.
You’ve probably seen me on RevOps Co-op webinars, heard me on the RevOpsAF podcast, or met me at one of our conferences. I’m Head of Marketing at RevOps Co-op, and I still consult as a fractional operator. I’ve spent more than 15 years across sales, marketing, and CS operations — solving go-to-market problems before RevOps was officially “a thing.”
I’ve been a VP of Marketing responsible for pipeline. I’ve owned domain health. I’ve had to explain to executives why email suddenly started funneling into spam. I’ve seen cold outbound generate millions in pipeline. And I’ve watched it nearly shut companies down.
This isn’t theoretical.
Every time someone in our Slack community asks whether others have noticed their emails landing in junk after adopting a new sequencing tool, my stomach drops a little.
When your domain gets flagged and Google suspends sending privileges, it’s not one salesperson in “Google jail.” It’s existential. I’ve spoken to marketers who have lived through the experience of having their entire domain shut down.
Finance can’t send invoices.
Customer Success can’t respond to clients.
The CEO can’t communicate externally.
You are effectively cut off from operating as a modern business.
Cold outbound isn’t just a sales issue. Destroying your domain is catastrophic.
The biggest mistake companies make is treating outbound like a short cut to pipeline instead of a series of infrastructure-protecting choices.
If you exceed spam thresholds using Google as your ESP (here are their sender guidelines), you don’t just burn one rep’s inbox. You risk your entire domain. And recovery isn’t quick. I know marketers who have spent weeks trying to regain access while the business limps along.
Layer on compliance, and it gets more serious.
It’s not just GDPR and CCPA anymore. In the U.S. alone, a wave of state-level privacy laws has changed how companies are allowed to collect, store, and use personal data. Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Iowa, Delaware, Tennessee, Indiana… And more are coming.
Cold outbound now lives inside legal, technical, and reputational boundaries.
RevOps already governs CRM architecture, data flows, attribution models, and reporting systems. Why would we ignore the channel that can literally get our domain shut down?
In order to have cold outbound sequences running without risking your domain, companies should:
Because these necessary steps can slow down your business development representative’s progress in the first one to three months, it’s important to set realistic targets and set an attainable ramp in their compensation plan.
There’s another B2B habit that makes me shake my head.
We hire the most junior person we can, give them a quota, a sequencing tool, and a list. And then we hope for pipeline.
It reminds me of the South Park underpants gnomes (here’s the clip):
Outbound is one of the most strategically complex motions in a B2B organization. It requires deep ICP clarity. It requires persona fluency. It requires knowing the difference between someone who looks like a buyer and someone who is actually in market.
When we give someone access to an outbound sequencing tool, we don’t ask:
Instead, we hand them automation and call it scale.
What if we flipped the model?
What if outbound strategy was owned by more senior operators, with AI used to accelerate research and execution, not replace thinking?
Enter the Revenue Engineer. (I loved Doug Bell’s idea so much that I’m running with it.)
This person wouldn’t just write sequences. They’d leverage AI to surface public buying signals, design segmented outreach based on those signals, determine appropriate outreach frequency, and continuously refine messaging based on real performance data.
Not everyone in RevOps will be suited for this kind of role. It requires commercial instinct and the willingness to own a number. But the operators who can combine systems thinking with buyer empathy will be worth their weight in gold. And paid accordingly.
My prediction: The new Revenue Engineer role will be absolutely critical to successfully scaling businesses – particularly those trying to break into new and existing markets.
Another uncomfortable truth: we don’t bother to take the time to learn from most outbound programs.
A few reps figure out messaging that resonates. Their response rates climb and they outperform their peers. And then they get promoted into a full-cycle seller role.
There’s rarely a structured feedback loop that connects:
RevOps is uniquely positioned to build the communication loop and operationalize improvements.
We already manage lifecycle stages. We already build reporting frameworks. We already care about attribution. Connecting outbound performance to pipeline quality and revenue outcomes should be a natural extension of that work.
If your outbound team doesn’t know which signals correlate with meetings that turn into real pipeline, they’re guessing. And guessing is expensive.
In my experience, you can’t assume marketing leaders are fully up to date on evolving privacy laws and platform restrictions. They often depend on operations to raise the red flag. If operations isn’t tracking those changes, risk creeps in quietly.
Marketing can’t just buy a list and blast it through HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Marketo. Every platform requires you to certify that you’ve earned the right to communicate. Violating those agreements risks account suspension — and again, domain damage.
When marketing pulls back to avoid risk, outbound shifts heavily to sales. RevOps often ends up in the middle, watching tension build instead of stepping in to define the guardrails.
Sales outbound email now requires infrastructure discipline. LinkedIn has similar constraints — spam too aggressively or automate irresponsibly, and accounts can be permanently restricted. There’s no ethical way to scale dozens of shadow profiles.
Outbound today is constrained by platform rules and algorithmic enforcement.
Ignoring that isn’t scrappy. It’s reckless.
As RevOps professionals, we can’t assume other teams understand the full scope of these constraints. We have to proactively review systems, validate configurations, and ensure compliance.
I still walk into organizations where marketers are emailing lists downloaded from enrichment tools and salespeople are sending thousands of emails per day.
When it comes to outbound, never assume.
Cold outbound is broken in most organizations.
Not because it can’t work.
But because it’s under-governed, poorly-automated, and strategically neglected.
It’s treated like a side motion instead of a core revenue system.
RevOps already owns CRM hygiene, reporting logic, lifecycle design, and attribution frameworks. If we’re serious about protecting pipeline and the business, we need to treat outbound like what it is:
Outbound doesn’t need more volume.
It needs the right combination of skills.
And I think RevOps is one of the most natural places to find and develop that talent.
