Blog
Notes from the
honest side of email
Deliverability, honest analytics and outreach craft — written in plain language, with no growth-hack snake oil.
Earlier articles
253 articles
Strategy8 min
Sending from Apollo? Here's what changes if you route sends through Norbelys
Apollo is a data platform, not a delivery one. A practical guide to keeping Apollo for sourcing while routing the actual sending through Norbelys instead.
Strategy8 min
Switching from Lemlist to Norbelys: a practical migration guide
Leaving Lemlist because email is your real bottleneck? What to export, what maps to what, and what changes — including an honest look at where Lemlist still wins.
Deliverability8 min
What warmup actually does for you before your first campaign even sends
Warmup isn't a feature you turn on later — it's what decides whether your first real campaign lands in the inbox or the spam folder. Here's what it does.
Deliverability5 min
What actually happens in the seconds after you hit send
Between your click and the recipient's inbox: a DNS lookup, a handshake with a stranger's server, and a filter deciding your fate — all in under two seconds.
ProspectingAnalysis6 min
Which industries actually reply to cold email (the answer depends on who's asking)
Food & Beverage replies at 3.47%, about 8x the 0.45% average, in a 7.5M-email 2025 study. Banking and Insurance sit at the other end. Here's why.
Prospecting9 min
How wholesale suppliers use cold email to find new business buyers
Trade shows and referrals only reach so far. Here's how wholesale and B2B suppliers use outbound email to find new retail and business buyers.
Deliverability7 min
Why the same email looks different in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail
Gmail, Outlook desktop, and Apple Mail don't share a rendering engine. One of them literally uses Microsoft Word — and that changes what you should design.
StrategyBuild note6 min
Why we count opens differently
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, Gmail's image proxy, and security scanners all fire the same tracking pixel a human does. Why we don't count them the same way.
DeliverabilityField note5 min
Yahoo added a one-tap unsubscribe button. It changes what your numbers mean
Yahoo's July 2026 update put unsubscribing one tap away, directly in the inbox. For senders, that reshapes what a rising unsubscribe rate actually signals.
AIAnalysis8 min
When an AI reads your email for them: what 'open rate' even means now
AI summarizers are becoming a real first reader in Gmail and Outlook — what's documented about zero-click inboxes and what it means for open and reply metrics.
Developer7 min
How to authenticate an AI coding agent against the Norbelys API safely
Never hand a coding agent your production API key. A guide to scoped dev keys, auth.md, and why credential discipline matters more with an agent in the loop.
Developer7 min
Building on the Norbelys API with Claude Code: a practical guide
How to use Claude Code to build a real tool against the Norbelys API — grounding it with the agent kit first, then walking a realistic task end to end.