Google Apps for my domain email: Any reason we should not authenticate DKIM for our domain?

Your emails have a lot of room for improvement. You have to: 1) Give a 1 sentence intro 2) Get right to the point quickly in a clear and easy to understand way. Eliminate all the long winded and confusing language (i.e. everything in quotes: "business attitudes towards....provision") 3) Most people will be very wary of clicking links in a cold-call email. Both because it would take time, and because they're expecting to see a huge survey and/or a crappy app made by some schmo. To get around that negative bias, include an impressive screenshot of your app, and include all the questions of your survey, or if it is super long, include just the most interesting questions to pique their interest. Have those things be in-line, not as attachments. Doing these things will help make them curious and help convince them that it's worth clicking on the link (they'll trust you more). 4) If allowed in this project, look into other routes other than emails. For instance: A) Post it to relevant subreddits (https://www.reddit.com/r/AlphaAndBetaUsers, https://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject, etc.). B) Mail a small gift (e.g. a small chocolate) to companies, and have a note on the chocolate with an intro and a link (use an URL shortener) and QR code. Even if they don't go to the link on the note, you could do a follow up email in which you mention that you previously sent them the gift, which will increase your success.

Cold emailing is just as bad for you and the recipient. Even if you have the perfect list, the attempt to sell in a cold email is rarely going to be effective. You're better off curating the list to the top prospects, find a mutual connection on LinkedIn or even just cold-invite them on LinkedIn,. Worst case scenario, send a 'permission pass' email where you simply gauge interest and let them know you won't be emailing them again if there's no interest. Keep it very short, non-commercial with just solid information/links to web, and an easy to reply yes/no answer.

It always starts with the list. You mention 'non opt-in' lists, which is certainly more troublesome than any domain name. Your best course of action is to get a new domain, re-confirm the lists you have (requiring the subscriber to click through in order to stay on), and only accept confirmed opt-in lists moving forward. It will decimate your mailing list in the short term, but long-term eliminate your deliverability concerns and improve ROI.

Do both. Verify but continue to let them use the site in a limited capacity or even better have a message at the top reminding them to verify as they use the site. Keeping the message up will drive the right people to verify and the wrong people to continue to not verify.

Not necessarily, if your app can potentially serve different markets with different demographics, it may be beneficial to market to each market individually. Since app interface often serves as a marketing tool, it is important that it resonates with its target audience. This means having a different interface for the same set of functionalities depending on your audience may be prudent. On the contrary, if you are simply trying to create variations of the app for a single market by short-cutting user testing and hoping that one of the interfaces will generate more interest, you are then over-saturating the market and may actually hurt yourself by creating unnecessary confusion for your users. I would suggest looking into what other apps your target audience is using and working off that to create a single user experience which would resonate with them. My name is Michael and I am an Entrepreneur, Adviser and Innovator in a Small Business and Technical Solutions arena. I'd be happy to offer you additional assistance if you are interested.