Launch Readiness: Know Your Campaign Is Ready Before It Sends

The Launch Readiness score is a 0 to 100 grade that AvairAI shows on the last tab of the Launch Checklist, just before you press Run. It looks at six parts of your campaign (the message, the content, the target accounts, the contacts, the sending setup and the sequence), tells you what is strong, and lists the few things worth fixing, each with a button that takes you to the right place. It never blocks a launch. Most outreach tools let you press Send and find out later what was wrong. By then the domain is damaged and the first emails are out. This one tells you first.

Key takeaways

• One score, six areas. Contacts carry 30 points, target accounts 20, sending 20, message and use case 15, content 10 and sequence and replies 5.
• Every finding is a fix, a tip or a fact. The tab asks you to act only where you can change something on this campaign.
• Six must-fix items sit outside the score. They cover the problems most likely to hurt deliverability or break the rules, and they lead the fix list.
• The score informs and never blocks. If a must-fix item is open, Run asks once and offers Run anyway.

Why a campaign can pass every step and still be weak

The Launch Checklist already walks you through the steps that must be right before outreach starts: Review, Mailboxes, Contacts and Phone Compliance where it applies. It blocks the launch while a required step is open. That is the floor, and a campaign can clear it and still have a weak spot.

The contact list may be small. A mailbox may be missing a DNS record. Email 1 may still be marked for review. The sequence may take two months to send. None of these stops a launch, and each one lowers the result. Our campaign setup checklist covers the steps. The score covers the quality of what you built with them.

The other problem is order. A long checklist with no ranking leaves a rep guessing which two or three items matter. The Readiness tab ranks them by what each fix is worth.

What the Launch Readiness score is

When the required checklist steps are done, the Launch Checklist opens on the Readiness tab. You can also open it at any time. The left side shows a score ring and six area rows, each with a bar, its points and a one-line summary. The right side shows Before you run: the fixes, biggest first. Each one has a button that names the action and says "up to +N points". A folded list called For your next campaign holds tips you cannot act on in this campaign.

The score maps to three bands:

• Strong: 80 or more
• Good: 60 to 79
• Fair: under 60

The score alone sets the band, and a Fair band is not shown in red. Red is kept for one thing: a must-fix item. The tab opens with what AvairAI built from your website and what went well, then asks for action only where action helps.

The six areas and what each one checks

Contacts (30 points)

This is the heaviest area, because the contact list drives deliverability and replies. It checks how many contacts AvairAI will really email, the mix of verified and likely-to-bounce addresses, whether contacts hold a role close to the campaign, how many accounts have two or more contacts, how many contacts have a personal opening line and how many are also in another running campaign. Contacts that are suppressed, unsubscribed or marked do-not-contact are not counted.

Target accounts (20 points)

This area checks how many target accounts show a recent Trigger Signal, how many of those accounts have a contact to email, how many may not fit the size or place you chose and whether any account's website is gone. If you brought your own account list, the signal-count and fit checks are left out, because you chose those accounts. The score never asks you to remove accounts to raise it.

Sending (20 points)

Here the tab checks that the campaign can send well and on time: SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every mailbox, mailbox health, emails per mailbox per day and how many mailboxes send for the campaign. It also estimates the sending days needed to reach every contact with email 1 and to finish the whole sequence. A mailbox that is still warming up is normal and costs nothing; our email warmup handles that.

Message and use case (15 points)

This area checks the story behind the campaign: whether the Use Case names a real customer, includes at least one result with a number, stays focused on one or two industries and agrees with your targeting guidance and campaign location. Changing the Use Case or the targets would reset the contacts, so these findings show as tips for your next campaign.

Content (10 points)

The tab checks the emails and call scripts the sequence will actually send. Any piece marked "Needs your review" by the automated content reviewer costs points. It also checks the shape of email 1: 50 to 150 words, a subject of 8 words or fewer, at most one link and one clear question at the end.

Sequence and replies (5 points)

This covers whether the campaign uses more than one channel, whether enough contacts can be called when calls are on and whether reply handling and a calendar link are set up. Our multichannel cadence page explains how the channels work together.

A check that does not apply to your campaign is left out and the score is rescaled to 100, so a campaign is never marked down for something it does not use.

Fix, tip or fact: how the tab decides what to ask of you

Every check that loses points ends up as exactly one of three kinds:

• Fix: you can change it on this campaign. It sits under "Before you run", with a button and "up to +N points".
• Tip: you can change it only on the next campaign. It sits under "For your next campaign", with a short how-to and no points.
• Fact: nobody can change it. It shows as a plain note under "What AvairAI found", with no button.

This is what keeps the tab calm. "AvairAI found 4 accounts with a recent Trigger Signal" is information, not a to-do. The buttons go to the exact place that fixes the problem: Review Content, the Upload dialog, the Mailboxes step, the remove dialog for likely bounces or the matching field in Account settings. After a fix you return to the Readiness tab. Fixes say "up to" because most close only part of a gap, and the tab never promises the full amount.

The six must-fix items

Six findings are marked must fix. They carry no points, sit apart from the score and lead the list:

1. Email 1 did not pass the content review.
2. SPF or DKIM is not set up on a mailbox.
3. Email 1 would take more than 15 sending days to reach everyone.
4. More than 5% of contacts are likely to bounce.
5. Fewer than 20 contacts can be emailed.
6. The email footer has no postal address.

If any of these is open when you press Run, AvairAI asks once ("Fix these before you run?"), names the top two and offers Run anyway. With none open, Run goes straight through, whatever the score.

These six are not arbitrary. Mailbox providers and regulators publish the rules behind most of them. Google requires bulk senders (more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail) to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC and keep spam rates below 0.30%, and Yahoo sets the same 0.3% line and requires authentication. In the United States, the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide says every commercial message must include your valid physical postal address, and each email in violation can carry penalties of more than $50,000. A missing record or a missing address is cheap to fix before sending and expensive to discover afterward.

Why contact verification carries the most weight

Before building the score, we measured hard bounces in our own production campaigns. The measurement was taken on 2026-10-09 across 69 customer campaigns with at least 50 email sends each. It is an internal measurement, not a promise of results, but it shaped the weights:

• Campaigns where 70% or more of the contacts were verified (GREEN) had a hard bounce rate of 2.5%.
• Campaigns with 50% to 70% GREEN contacts had a rate of 7.3%.
• Campaigns under 50% GREEN had a rate of 16.6%.
• Campaigns with more than 5% RED (likely to bounce) contacts bounced at 13.4%, against 2.8% for campaigns with none.

That is why verification carries the most weight inside the Contacts area, why an unsure (YELLOW) contact counts as half a contact and why more than 5% likely bounces is a must-fix item. The wider industry guidance points the same way. Mailgun's guidance puts an acceptable bounce rate at under 2% and warns that a spike in hard bounces can lead to filtering or throttling by the big inbox providers. We cover the mechanics in how bounce rates and contact verification connect, and Contact Verification is the step that moves a campaign toward the better end of the list above.

How it helps you run the right campaign

A score is only useful if it changes what you do next. Here is how the tab does that in practice.

It sorts the signal from the noise. A new user sees one band word and a short list instead of a long checklist. A team lead can see at a glance whether a campaign is ready to go.

It catches the quiet problems. Say a rep uploads a large list. After verification, the tab shows that more than 5% of the contacts are likely to bounce, and the button next to it removes them. The problem clears before a single email goes out.

It shows when a campaign will take too long. If email 1 would take more than 15 sending days to reach everyone, the tab says so and names the fix, usually adding a mailbox. A campaign that finishes inside a month is the target.

It puts the biggest gains first. Fixes are ordered by what they can add, and must-fix items always lead. Your time goes where it counts.

It tells you what to change next time. The Message and Target findings you cannot change on this campaign show up as tips. You carry them into the next campaign instead of resetting this one.

What the score does not do

It is worth being plain about the limits:

• It does not predict replies or leads. The score grades readiness to launch, not results.
• It does not approve a campaign. It informs, and it never blocks a launch.
• The sending-day figures are estimates, based on your mailbox limits, the sending window, the per-company limit and the seniority order.
• The point values are AvairAI's chosen defaults, and they may change in a later version of the score.

How to use it

1. Open a campaign and work through the Launch Checklist: Review, Mailboxes, Contacts and Phone Compliance if it applies.
2. When the required steps are done, the checklist opens on the Readiness tab.
3. Start with any must-fix items, then work down the fixes by points.
4. Open an area to see what AvairAI found in it, or open All checks for the full list with a help note on each.
5. Press Run. If something real is still open, AvairAI asks once.

The Readiness tab is available in the Launch Checklist for trial and paid accounts. If you build campaigns through the External Campaign API, the status response carries a read-only readiness_score while the campaign is ready to launch. It never blocks an API launch.

Open a campaign and see its score before you press Run.

Frequently asked questions

Does a low score stop me from launching?

No. The score never blocks a launch. If a must-fix item is open, Run asks once and you can choose Run anyway.

What do Strong, Good and Fair mean?

Strong is 80 or more, Good is 60 to 79 and Fair is under 60. The score alone sets the band.

Why does the tab say "up to +N points"?

Most fixes close only part of a gap, so AvairAI shows the most a fix can add and does not promise the full amount.

Is the sending-days figure exact?

No. It is an estimate based on your mailbox limits, the sending window, the per-company limit and the seniority order.