Warm up your outbound list before the first email
Show your outbound targets two to four weeks of articles, research and customer stories on the news sites they read. By the time an SDR writes, your name is familiar.
Without ContactLevel
The first touch is also the first time they see your name. Most of those emails get deleted before anyone reads the offer.
With ContactLevel
ContactLevel syncs your outbound list to Taboola. Your content shows up as a recommendation next to the stories they chose to read, weeks before sales makes contact.
How It Works
Lock the outbound list early
Put the next sequence's contacts in a ContactLevel audience at least two weeks before it starts. Taboola needs 1,000 records or more.
Sync it to Taboola automatically
Connect Realize once. ContactLevel enriches the contacts and keeps the customer list updated as SDRs add new cohorts.
Run content for 2-4 weeks, then hand off
Promote research and customer stories, then start outreach with the contacts the ContactLevel pixel shows visited first.
Why It Works
Why warm up cold lists on Taboola
An SDR's first email lands on someone who has never heard of you. They delete it. Your name means nothing to them yet.
Warmup changes the order. Two to four weeks before the first email, the people on your outbound list start seeing your content. By the time the SDR writes, your name has shown up a few times next to stories they chose to read.
Taboola fits this job well because of its ad unit. It's a content recommendation: a headline and an image under a news article, next to other things to read. People click it to read something. That is exactly what warmup needs. You want a cold prospect to spend two minutes with your thinking before anyone asks them for a meeting.
It also tends to cost less per impression than LinkedIn, so the same budget warms a bigger outbound list.
The limit is reach. Taboola is mostly consumers. Run warmup on topic targeting and you warm up the general public. It only works when the audience is your actual outbound list. Taboola Ads for B2B covers how the channel works with named audiences.
How it works with ContactLevel
- Lock the outbound list early. Decide who SDRs will contact in the next sequence at least two weeks before it starts. Put those people in one ContactLevel audience, from your CRM, a CSV or Contact Search.
- Clear 1,000 records. That's Taboola's floor for a customer list (the ceiling is 3 million). A quarter of outbound usually clears it. If one cohort doesn't, combine two cohorts into one warmup list.
- Connect Realize once. ContactLevel enriches each contact with the personal identifiers Taboola matches on and syncs the list. When it shows Ready under Audiences, target it on the campaign. Contacts SDRs add later sync automatically, so the next cohort starts warming with no new upload.
- Write for the recommendation format. The headline should read like an article headline. Send people to original research, a customer story with the problem in the title, or a short how-to that solves one small thing. No demo page. Someone who clicked from a news site is in reading mode.
- Bid for steady delivery. Use Fixed Bid or Enhanced CPC. Taboola's guidance is a daily budget of at least 5x your CPA goal and a monthly budget of at least 150x. In warmup, the conversion is a content visit, so set a soft goal. Move to Maximize Conversions only if you can fund a daily budget of 10x that CPA.
- Hand SDRs the readers first. With UTM parameters and the ContactLevel pixel, you see which named contacts clicked through. Start the sequence with them, and open on the same topic they read about.
- Pull people out when they reply. When a contact books a meeting or becomes an open opportunity in the CRM, remove them from the warmup audience and the sync takes them out of Taboola. Or keep an open-opportunity list and suppress it on the campaign.
Keep the window between two and four weeks. Shorter, and most of the list hasn't seen you more than once. Longer, and the list goes stale before anyone calls.
When to use this play
Run it when:
→ Each outbound cycle covers 1,000 people or more → You have at least two pieces of content worth reading without a sales call → SDRs can wait two weeks before the first touch
Skip it when:
→ Your outbound is a few hundred hand-picked accounts (use LinkedIn warmup instead) → The only thing you can link to is a demo page → You need meetings this week. Warmup is a two-week investment at minimum.
Frequently asked questions
How long should warmup run before outreach starts?
Two to four weeks. Two is the minimum for most of the list to see you more than once. Past four weeks, people change jobs, the list decays and SDRs lose the timing.
What should the Taboola ads link to?
Something a stranger would read on purpose. A research report, a benchmark you built from your own data, a customer story told as a problem and a fix. Keep the page free of forms. Lead capture comes later, once they know your name.
Should SDRs mention the ads in their emails?
No. Mention the topic. "Saw you're dealing with X, we wrote up how other teams handled it" works. Telling someone you tracked their ad clicks does not.
Can I use Taboola website retargeting instead?
Not for warmup. "My Audiences" retargets people who already visited your site through the Taboola pixel. Cold prospects haven't visited yet, which is the whole point. Use it after warmup, for the people who clicked through and didn't book.
How do I know warmup worked?
Hold out part of the list. Keep a random slice of the outbound cohort out of the Taboola audience, then compare reply and meeting rates between warmed and unwarmed contacts after the sequence. That's the only number that tells you whether the spend paid off.
→ Related: Meta Cold Prospect Warmup, Taboola ABM Buyer Group Targeting, Taboola Ghosted Lead Recovery