There is no typical. Engagements range from one four-hour diagnostic session to ongoing quarterly relationships lasting years. The timeline depends entirely on what you need, and that’s the whole point.
We don’t have a default engagement length. You don’t sign up for a “standard 12-week program” or a “typical consulting package” where you’re locked into something longer than necessary. Scope determines duration. Problem size determines timeline.
Real Examples of Different Timeline Lengths
A company calls saying their authentication isn’t working. We run the diagnostic, find a broken DKIM record, walk them through the fix, validate it’s working. Total engagement: 2 hours. Cost: $500. Problem: solved. Never need to talk again.
A different company calls saying their mail started going to spam three weeks ago. We diagnose a reputation problem caused by a too-aggressive volume ramp. We scope a 3-week engagement where they reduce volume, clean their list, adjust their sending cadence, and we monitor reputation recovery. Total engagement: 4 weeks (including the diagnostic). Cost: $3,000. Problem: solved. They move on.
A third company realizes they’re running cold outreach, transactional email, and marketing email from overlapping infrastructure and everything is degrading. We scope a 6-week engagement to implement proper segmentation, fix multiple reputation streams, and establish monitoring. Total engagement: 6-8 weeks. Cost: $4,500. After engagement is complete, they decide to add ongoing quarterly advisory because they want to prevent future problems as they scale. So they continue at $7,500/quarter.
A fourth company is running high-volume cold outreach and wants to do it safely. We do the diagnostic, scope a 4-week warming and infrastructure setup program, then move into ongoing quarterly advisory for 18 months as they scale volume from 10k to 100k emails per day. Total initial engagement: 4 weeks. Total ongoing: 18 months.
Every one of these timelines is different because every problem is different.
The Diagnostic Always Comes First
Every engagement, regardless of size, starts with the diagnostic. This answers the core question: What’s your problem, and how much work does solving it actually require?
The diagnostic takes 1-2 hours and costs $500. At the end of it, you know:
- What’s actually causing your deliverability problem
- Whether it’s a small fix or a systemic issue
- What the next step costs (nothing if it’s solved, or $2,500-$5,000 if you need scoped work, or $5,000-$15,000/quarter if you need ongoing advisory)
- How long you can expect the next phase to take
You never commit to a longer engagement without understanding exactly what you’re committing to.
Factors That Affect Duration
Several things determine how long an engagement lasts:
Severity and complexity of the problem: A simple reputation spike might resolve once you fix the underlying cause and reputation recovers naturally (1-2 weeks). A deep systemic issue with multiple problems interacting (reputation damage compounded by authentication gaps compounded by list quality problems) takes longer to diagnose and remedy.
Your execution speed: We scope work and provide guidance. You execute. If you can implement DNS changes quickly, update your ESP configuration immediately, and adjust sending behavior right away, an engagement completes faster. If you need time to coordinate across teams, get approvals, find contractor resources, or schedule time for implementation, it takes longer.
Complexity of your infrastructure: A simple single-stream email operation sending from one IP to one sending domain might need one 2-hour diagnostic to diagnose and fix. A company managing cold outreach from three domains, transactional email from two domains, marketing campaigns from another domain, and lifecycle email scattered across multiple infrastructures needs comprehensive assessment and systematic work.
Regulatory or compliance requirements: Some industries have stricter email standards (finance with DKIM enforcement, healthcare with patient privacy implications, gambling with strict fraud requirements). This often extends the scope of initial assessment and the rigor required for implementation.
Your ongoing needs: Some companies solve their immediate problem and move on. They’re done. Others realize they’re running email operations at scale and need ongoing oversight to prevent problems or manage growth. Or they realize they need quarterly monitoring to catch issues early before they become crises.
Scoped vs Open-Ended: Everything Has a Finish Line
This is important: nothing is open-ended by default. Scoped engagements have defined milestones and end dates. When the milestones are complete, when the problem is solved, the engagement is complete. You’re not paying month after month indefinitely.
Ongoing quarterly advisory is continuous, but it’s a true quarterly model with defined scope each quarter. You can pause it. You can stop it. It’s not “lock yourself into a retainer forever.” It’s “we review every quarter and you decide whether you need to continue.”
You never get locked into a program that’s longer than you need.
What Happens After an Engagement Ends
After a scoped engagement completes, you have a few options:
- Move on and manage your email operations yourself (you learned from the engagement and now understand your infrastructure)
- Move into ongoing quarterly advisory if you want proactive monitoring and guidance as you scale
- Come back to us if a new problem emerges later (we’re available for crisis diagnostics anytime)
Most companies do one of the first two. Some engage, solve their problem, and don’t work with us again for years. Some solve an initial problem, then add quarterly advisory because they realize the value of proactive monitoring. Some take on a scoped engagement and find the results valuable enough that they move into ongoing advisory immediately after.
The Real Measure: Start With the Diagnostic
The best way to understand whether an engagement makes sense is to start with the diagnostic. For $500, you get clarity on what you actually need. From there, the scope becomes obvious, and you make an informed decision about next steps.
You’re not signing up for something unknown. You’re not committing to a program before you understand what you’re getting into. You get the diagnosis first, then you decide.
We’d love to learn more about your business, email deliverability and outreach goals, and see if we might be able to help.
Whether you have questions about what we do, how Protocol works, or you’d just like to pick our brains on some of our best practices, we’d be happy to chat.
Schedule a call with our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme.
There is no typical. Engagements range from one four-hour diagnostic session to ongoing quarterly relationships lasting years. The timeline depends entirely on what you need, and that’s the whole point.
We don’t have a default engagement length. You don’t sign up for a “standard 12-week program” or a “typical consulting package” where you’re locked into something longer than necessary. Scope determines duration. Problem size determines timeline.
Real Examples of Different Timeline Lengths
A company calls saying their authentication isn’t working. We run the diagnostic, find a broken DKIM record, walk them through the fix, validate it’s working. Total engagement: 2 hours. Cost: $500. Problem: solved. Never need to talk again.
A different company calls saying their mail started going to spam three weeks ago. We diagnose a reputation problem caused by a too-aggressive volume ramp. We scope a 3-week engagement where they reduce volume, clean their list, adjust their sending cadence, and we monitor reputation recovery. Total engagement: 4 weeks (including the diagnostic). Cost: $3,000. Problem: solved. They move on.
A third company realizes they’re running cold outreach, transactional email, and marketing email from overlapping infrastructure and everything is degrading. We scope a 6-week engagement to implement proper segmentation, fix multiple reputation streams, and establish monitoring. Total engagement: 6-8 weeks. Cost: $4,500. After engagement is complete, they decide to add ongoing quarterly advisory because they want to prevent future problems as they scale. So they continue at $7,500/quarter.
A fourth company is running high-volume cold outreach and wants to do it safely. We do the diagnostic, scope a 4-week warming and infrastructure setup program, then move into ongoing quarterly advisory for 18 months as they scale volume from 10k to 100k emails per day. Total initial engagement: 4 weeks. Total ongoing: 18 months.
Every one of these timelines is different because every problem is different.
The Diagnostic Always Comes First
Every engagement, regardless of size, starts with the diagnostic. This answers the core question: What’s your problem, and how much work does solving it actually require?
The diagnostic takes 1-2 hours and costs $500. At the end of it, you know:
- What’s actually causing your deliverability problem
- Whether it’s a small fix or a systemic issue
- What the next step costs (nothing if it’s solved, or $2,500-$5,000 if you need scoped work, or $5,000-$15,000/quarter if you need ongoing advisory)
- How long you can expect the next phase to take
You never commit to a longer engagement without understanding exactly what you’re committing to.
Factors That Affect Duration
Several things determine how long an engagement lasts:
Severity and complexity of the problem: A simple reputation spike might resolve once you fix the underlying cause and reputation recovers naturally (1-2 weeks). A deep systemic issue with multiple problems interacting (reputation damage compounded by authentication gaps compounded by list quality problems) takes longer to diagnose and remedy.
Your execution speed: We scope work and provide guidance. You execute. If you can implement DNS changes quickly, update your ESP configuration immediately, and adjust sending behavior right away, an engagement completes faster. If you need time to coordinate across teams, get approvals, find contractor resources, or schedule time for implementation, it takes longer.
Complexity of your infrastructure: A simple single-stream email operation sending from one IP to one sending domain might need one 2-hour diagnostic to diagnose and fix. A company managing cold outreach from three domains, transactional email from two domains, marketing campaigns from another domain, and lifecycle email scattered across multiple infrastructures needs comprehensive assessment and systematic work.
Regulatory or compliance requirements: Some industries have stricter email standards (finance with DKIM enforcement, healthcare with patient privacy implications, gambling with strict fraud requirements). This often extends the scope of initial assessment and the rigor required for implementation.
Your ongoing needs: Some companies solve their immediate problem and move on. They’re done. Others realize they’re running email operations at scale and need ongoing oversight to prevent problems or manage growth. Or they realize they need quarterly monitoring to catch issues early before they become crises.
Scoped vs Open-Ended: Everything Has a Finish Line
This is important: nothing is open-ended by default. Scoped engagements have defined milestones and end dates. When the milestones are complete, when the problem is solved, the engagement is complete. You’re not paying month after month indefinitely.
Ongoing quarterly advisory is continuous, but it’s a true quarterly model with defined scope each quarter. You can pause it. You can stop it. It’s not “lock yourself into a retainer forever.” It’s “we review every quarter and you decide whether you need to continue.”
You never get locked into a program that’s longer than you need.
What Happens After an Engagement Ends
After a scoped engagement completes, you have a few options:
- Move on and manage your email operations yourself (you learned from the engagement and now understand your infrastructure)
- Move into ongoing quarterly advisory if you want proactive monitoring and guidance as you scale
- Come back to us if a new problem emerges later (we’re available for crisis diagnostics anytime)
Most companies do one of the first two. Some engage, solve their problem, and don’t work with us again for years. Some solve an initial problem, then add quarterly advisory because they realize the value of proactive monitoring. Some take on a scoped engagement and find the results valuable enough that they move into ongoing advisory immediately after.
The Real Measure: Start With the Diagnostic
The best way to understand whether an engagement makes sense is to start with the diagnostic. For $500, you get clarity on what you actually need. From there, the scope becomes obvious, and you make an informed decision about next steps.
You’re not signing up for something unknown. You’re not committing to a program before you understand what you’re getting into. You get the diagnosis first, then you decide.
Our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme, is leading the Triggered Outbound program.Chrisley’s gone deep on this strategy and can walk you through:
- How Triggered Outbound fits with your outbound goals
- What triggers are available (and what’s possible within our platform)
- Pricing, onboarding, and getting started
