How to sell to Heads of Marketing at Cybersecurity companies
Heads of Marketing in cybersecurity are primarily measured on lead generation and brand visibility. They respond to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of their compliance challenges and how your solution can streamline their marketing efforts while enhancing security messaging. Showing familiarity with SOC 2 requirements can make your outreach stand out.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 569 cybersecurity company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- inconsistent lead quality
- difficulty communicating compliance
- limited budget for marketing tools
- pressure to generate quick results
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent compliance updates
Research the latest SOC 2 compliance updates or cybersecurity regulations relevant to your target companies. Use platforms like LinkedIn or industry news sites to find announcements. This information will help you tailor your messaging to highlight how your solution can assist with these changes.
- 02
Target companies launching new products
Filter your list to include cybersecurity firms that recently launched new products or services. Use press releases or news articles as your data source. These companies are likely to invest in marketing efforts to promote their new offerings, making them more receptive to your outreach.
- 03
Craft messaging around security marketing
Develop your outreach message to emphasize the importance of security in marketing campaigns. Reference specific examples of how compliance can enhance trust in their brand. This approach will resonate with heads of marketing looking to align their messaging with industry standards.
- 04
Address common objections about ROI
Prepare to counter objections related to the perceived ROI of your solution. Be ready to discuss how investing in your service can lead to higher-quality leads and improved brand reputation. Providing concrete examples of cost savings can help alleviate their concerns.
- 05
Follow up after industry events
Monitor industry events and webinars where your target prospects are speaking or attending. Schedule your follow-up outreach shortly after these events to capitalize on the momentum. Mentioning the event in your communication can create a relevant context for your conversation.
Can cybersecurity companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 569 cybersecurity companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 30.3% of 1–10-person companies against 91.3% of the largest — 61 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Navigating SOC 2 compliance
- Boosting trust in your brand
- Enhancing security in marketing
Questions
- Why do heads of marketing in cybersecurity ignore cold outreach?
- Heads of marketing in cybersecurity often receive numerous cold outreach messages that lack relevance to their specific compliance challenges. If the outreach does not clearly address their unique pain points or demonstrate an understanding of the cybersecurity landscape, it is likely to be overlooked.
- What messaging resonates with cybersecurity marketing leaders?
- Messaging that emphasizes the intersection of security and marketing tends to resonate well. Highlighting how compliance can enhance brand trust and lead quality is crucial. Additionally, addressing specific challenges they face in communicating security effectively will capture their attention.
- How can I demonstrate value to cybersecurity marketing heads?
- Demonstrating value requires showing a clear understanding of their compliance needs and how your solution can streamline their marketing efforts. Providing case studies or examples of how similar companies improved their lead generation and brand visibility through enhanced security messaging can be persuasive.
- What common objections do heads of marketing have?
- Common objections include concerns about the ROI of new marketing tools, the effectiveness of your solution in their specific context, and the potential disruption to existing processes. Addressing these objections with concrete data and examples can help alleviate their concerns and open the door for further discussion.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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