ABM Tier Strategy — Tier 1/2/3 Email Campaigns

Overview

AviaryAI's outbound strategy uses a three-tier ABM model to segment targets by personalization depth and send volume. The core problem driving this architecture: manual sending was capped at 100 emails/day — statistically insufficient to measure open rates or message effectiveness. The solution is a custom AWS SES automation layer that scales volume while preserving full HubSpot visibility.

This approach was finalized in the ^[1].

Tier Definitions

Architecture Decision: AWS SES over SendGrid

Decision: Build a custom AWS SES solution rather than using SendGrid or HubSpot's native email tools.

Rationale:
- Avoids paid tool costs (HubSpot bulk email requires Marketing Pro; SendGrid adds another vendor)
- AWS SES can handle millions of emails/day at near-zero marginal cost
- Integrates with HubSpot via webhooks for full activity tracking (sent, opened, clicked)
- Sends can be logged back to HubSpot contact/deal records with full email body included

Key requirement from client: Blessing (AviaryAI's internal stakeholder) reviews all outreach activity in HubSpot. The system must log the full email body — not just open/click events — mirroring what the existing Outlook integration provides. This was the deciding factor in the architecture.

"He would want to have the emails in HubSpot. Not just, did they send an email, did they open the email? He would like to see the body of the email." — Aaron Grossman

Tier 1 Email Flow

1. Strategy documents are pre-built per target company (research + 7–8 email sequence)
2. AWS SES pulls the queue every minute and sends automatically
3. HubSpot receives webhook events: email sent (with body), opened, clicked, unsubscribed
4. Activity appears in the HubSpot contact/deal activity feed — identical to Outlook-logged emails
5. Aaron receives a Slack notification when the first batch goes out

Aaron does not review individual emails before send. The expectation is: review the strategy docs and email tone once, approve the flow, then let it run and iterate based on results.

Tier 2 / Tier 3 Bulk Campaign Notes

• Same AWS SES infrastructure handles bulk tiers
• Personalization is merge-field level (name, company) rather than individually researched
• Target volume: 1,000/week to start, scalable beyond that
• Requires a clean, categorized contact database — see ^[2]
• Initial learning budget: $1,000/month to test and measure results before scaling

Contact Database Requirements

The existing 71k-contact HubSpot database must be cleaned before high-volume campaigns can run. Key issues:
- ~20k contacts are VC firm records (irrelevant to ICP) added in a prior data dump
- Many contacts have broken/missing names from a failed automation attempt
- Email addresses are stale — contacts have changed jobs, leaving invalid addresses that will bounce

Cleanup scope: deduplicate, fill missing names via Clay/Apollo, categorize into Credit Unions / Community Banks / Insurance Companies / Other, run email hygiene validation.

See ^[2] for full scope.

Generalizable Pattern

This tier architecture applies beyond AviaryAI. The core insight:

When a client's ICP is large and well-defined (e.g., "all U.S. credit unions"), a tiered send model lets you run high-touch Tier 1 outreach in parallel with high-volume Tier 3 market coverage — using the same infrastructure.

The AWS SES + HubSpot webhook pattern is reusable for any client where:
- HubSpot is the CRM of record
- Stakeholders need email visibility without a separate tool login
- Send volume exceeds what HubSpot's native email or a paid ESP can handle cost-effectively

See also: ^[3]

Related

• ^[4]
• ^[5]
• ^[6]
• ^[3]