Vatsal Shah “There’s a slight—but huge—difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how to do something the right way.”
And it couldn’t be more true when you’re dealing with something as critical as Email Warm Up.
One small mistake here and your emails will never get to see the inbox again!!
Because this is the very first step you’ll have to take to build trust and credibility between your email accounts and email service providers (ESPs).
I have had my share of failures, some recoverable while some cost me greatly.
So, I put together this blog to help you avoid the most common email warm-up mistakes and make sure your email accounts are ready for your outreach campaigns.
So dive in!
P.S. You don’t have to worry about most of these mistakes if you’re using a reliable warm-up tool like TrulyInbox.
Email Warm-up Mistakes – Table of Contents
Top 10 Email Warm Up Mistakes You Should Avoid in 2025
After running multiple experiments, I have compiled this list of easy-to-overlook mistakes when warming up your new email accounts.
Again, I’d like to reinforce the fact that a good warm-up platform can take care of most of these issues automatically.
But, if you’re doing it manually, here are some warm up pitfalls you should be aware of:
- Not Authenticating Your Email Accounts
- Using a Shared IP Address
- Sending Too Many Emails From the Start
- Warming Up Inconsistently
- Emailing Random Accounts
- Not Cleaning Your Email List
- Not Monitoring Your Sender Reputation
- Using Spammy Words
- Not Personalizing Warm-up Emails
- Not Creating Conversational Threads
1. Not Authenticating Your Email Accounts
The first step you should take after getting your new email accounts is to set up the authentication records.
“Start your warm up only after setting up your authentication records – SPF, DKIM, DMARC.”
If you miss this step, you’re email accounts will probably get blacklisted even before you start reaching out to your prospects.
There are three authentication protocols, and here’s what they do:
- Sender Protocol Framework (SPF): This protocol will tell Email Service Providers (ESPs – Gmail, Yahoo, etc) that your emails are coming from an authorized server.
- Domain-Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): Adds a digital signature to your emails to show ESPs that it has not been tampered with when in transit. This is very important to show your email’s integrity.
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): This is the final security checkpoint. You can tailor your DMARC policy to tell ESPs how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks.
If you are planning on using your email accounts for cold emails or outreach, I suggest setting up all three authentications the moment you get your hands on your new email account.
If you’re serious about email warm-up and deliverability, using a shared IP address is a mistake you’ll want to avoid.
With a shared IP, you never know who else is sending emails from the same IP.
You could be sharing it with spammers, bulk emailers, or businesses with poor sending practices—and their mistakes can hurt your sender reputation, even if you’re doing everything right.
So what’s the fix?
Use a dedicated IP address if you’re sending large email volumes—it gives you full control over your sender reputation. This can be a bit expensive, but if emails are your revenue driver, then the expense will auto justify itself.
Alternatively, you can also go for a very reputable email provider that actively monitors senders and removes users who use bad sending practices.
This way, you can still use a shared IP, keep costs low, and get high deliverability.
3. Sending Too Many Emails From the Start
One problem I’ve often noticed with email warm up is that users start sending too many emails too soon from their email account.
I have seen many people start at 20-30 emails right at the start and then increase till they reach triple digit sending volume in a day.
Doing that will tell the ESP that you’re not a trustworthy sender.
It WILL produce the opposite effect from the one you want: your emails are routed to the spam folder!
The solution: start with a small but steady stream of emails, and gradually take up the sending volume throughout the warm up phase.
This is what I recommend: “Start with 3 to 7 emails a day, increase that number by 15 to 20% a day till you reach 50 emails a day.”
4. Warming Up Inconsistently
The goal of email warm-up is to prove to Email Service Providers (ESPs) that you’re a trusted sender, not a bot spamming their users with irrelevant content.
So, if you send 10 emails today, 20 tomorrow, then none the next day, and suddenly 10 again, you’re sending mixed signals to the ESP.
This inconsistency will hurt your sender reputation.
I highly recommend that you follow a consistent email warm up schedule. It will increase your inbox placement rate and boost your sender reputation.
5. Emailing Random Accounts
To whom you send emails matters a lot during the warm-up stage.
If you’re sending emails to random, unverified, or inactive accounts, you’re making a huge mistake!!!!
ESPs will monitor how recipients interact with your emails—bounces, unopened emails, or spam reports can seriously damage your sender reputation before you even start real outreach.
When doing warm-up manually, you need B2B email accounts (preferred) with good sender reputation and start conversations—not just send one-way emails.
This is why I recommend using an automated email warm up platform, as they can do all the heavy lifting for you.
6. Not Cleaning Your Email List
Throughout my experience in outreach, I’ve noticed that some users obtain email lists just to send warm-up emails—and that’s where they go wrong.
If you’re sending warm-up emails to unverified, inactive, or low-quality addresses, you’re doing more harm than good.
Your emails may bounce, go unopened, or get flagged as spam, etc., all this will damage your sender reputation.
The Fix I Suggest: Send your warm up emails to people you know well and ask them to:
- Open your emails as soon as they land in their inbox.
- Reply naturally to create engagement (even a short response works).
- Mark your emails as important or move them out of the spam folder if they land there
The Fix I Recommend: “Use a platform like TrulyInbox to automate the entire process and not depend on anyone.”
7. Not Monitoring Your Sender Reputation
One scenario I’ve often observed in email warm-ups is that users send emails and just hope for the best—thinking that after three or four weeks, they’re good to go for their cold email or outreach campaign.
But here’s the reality: Email warm-up isn’t just about waiting—it’s about actively monitoring your sender reputation to ensure everything is going smoothly.
If you don’t track your sender reputation, you could be wasting weeks on a failed warm-up process without even realizing it.
Here’s what you should do to avoid this 👇
Use Google’s (free) Postmaster Tools to monitor your sender and domain reputation, you can also check for spam complaints.
If you see a dip or spike in these metrics, you’ll have to take corrective action.
8. Using Spammy Words
When ESPs monitor your email conversations to understand whether you’re a trusted sender, they have many metrics.
For example, they check whether you’re sending attachments with your emails or including suspicious links in the content.
In my experience, one of the most important metrics is the use of spammy words. This means salesy phrases like, “Deal,” “Discount,” “Buy Now,” “Download the Whitepaper,” and so on.
You can verify this very easily: just go to your email account’s spam folder and you’ll see many such emails that the ESP has consigned to email hell!
So, if you send emails with such spammy words, the ESP will very likely send your emails to spam folders as well!
How to avoid this issue?
It’s simple: avoid using spammy content at all costs.
9. Not Personalizing Warm-up Emails
One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen (and even made myself) is that users send generic sounding emails during email warm up.
ESP spam filters are smart!
If they notice a set pattern of emails being sent from your account, they might mistake you for a bot and mark your email account for malicious activity.
And what does that mean?
You guessed it: low sender reputation, low deliverability.
So, and I can’t emphasize this enough: always personalize your emails, even during the warm up phase!
10. Not Creating Conversational Threads
Okay, so let’s say you’re:
- Sending emails consistently
- Using a securely authenticated email account
- Gradually increasing the sending volume
- Avoiding spammy words
- And even monitoring your sender reputation
Will that finally do the trick and lead to a successful email warm up?
Not quite! There’s one last thing you need to watch out for: not getting enough replies!
Think about it: how does the ESP know that you’re sending valuable communication to its users?
Simple: if the recipient replies to your email, they probably found some value in it.
But if this doesn’t happen, if your emails land in recipients’ inboxes and they even open it, but don’t end up replying, your sender reputation might not improve too much!
My recommendation: During the email warm up phase, focus on getting replies rather than just click-throughs or inbox placements. Keep your emails warm, personalized, and free of spammy words.
I always use an email warm-up platform like TrulyInbox, so I don’t have to go through all this hassle.
Anyways, next I’ll show you how you can easily avoid these silly mistakes.
How to Easily Avoid Email Warm Up Mistakes?
Now that we’ve gone through all the mistakes you can possibly make in email warm up, I know what you’re thinking:
It’s one thing to understand where you might go wrong, but another to successfully avoid all the mistakes.
I hear you: avoiding all email warm up mistakes can be very challenging, if you do warm up manually!
But by automating it with the right email warm up platform, you can easily avoid all these silly mistakes.
How Does An Email Warm Up Tool Work?
Very briefly, here’s what an email warm up tool does to automate the email warm up process:
- It sends a pre-decided number of emails to verified email accounts
- Takes the emails sent from your accounts out of the recipient’s spam folder
- It then replies to your email and stars it so that the ESP knows it’s important
And that’s not all: you can also tell the email warm up tool how many emails you want to send, how many replies you want to receive, and the frequency at which you want to increase the email volume!
Plus, an email warm up tool guarantees a certain amount of email deliverability that you’ll be able to achieve after the warm up.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well, trust me, as someone who has used an email warm up tool, it’s not!
In fact, it’s exactly what you should be using to warm up your email accounts for outreach!
Email warm up tool this, email warm up tool that, I have talk a lot about them.
Let me show you some of the most replaible platforms if you want to try one for your business.
3 Best Tools to Help You Avoid Email Warm up Mistakes
Okay, so you might be thinking that automated email warm up sounds like a really good option, especially if it’s going to deliver results. But which warm up tool is right for you?
To help you make an informed decision, I’ve listed below the three stand-out tools that I’ve come across. Let’s check them out:
1. TrulyInbox
Deliverability Rate: 98%
TrulyInbox is an effective email warmup tool that is compatible with almost every top ESP out there.
It’s also very easy to use: you can be on your way to high email deliverability in less than two minutes!
Plus, TrulyInbox puts you in-charge of all critical email warm-up decisions. This includes:
- How many emails you want to send
- How many replies you want to receive
- How you want to ramp up email volume
The best part about TrulyInbox is that it allows you to connect an unlimited number of inboxes for warm-up, at no additional cost!
Pricing (Billed Annually):
You’ll find TrulyInbox to be very cost-effective when compared to many warm up platforms.
- Starter: $22/month
- Growth: $59/month
- Scale: $142/month
Check out the pricing page to knwo more!
2. Warmup Inbox
Deliverability Rate: 95%
Warmup Inbox offers comprehensive email warmup services through its network of 30K+ real email accounts.
All you need to use Warmup Inbox’s warmup services is an email account with SMTP credentials. Plus, it also works with most of the best ESPs on the market.
One thing I noticed that makes Warmup Inbox stand out from the rest is its multilingual warm up feature. So, if you want to warm up your email account to send outreach emails to prospects in emerging markets, Warmup Inbox could be your ideal option!
Pricing (Billed Annually):
One downside to Warmup Inbox is that it charges you separately for every inbox you want to warm up.
Here’s a quick look at the plans it offers:
- Basic: $15/month/inbox
- Pro: $49/month/inbox
- Max: $79/month/inbox
3. Warmy.io
Deliverability Rate: 94%
Warmy.io provides a host of warm up capabilities through real, human email accounts.
It also excels at generating warmup emails personalized to the recipient. This massively increases the chances of good email warmup results.
One thing I noticed about Warmy.io is that it offers topic-specific email warm up. So, you can select keywords depending on your industry and Warmy.io will generate warmup emails around that topic.
Pricing:
Warmy.io takes a volume-based approach to pricing. So, if you need to warm up more than one email account, the costs can multiply exponentially!
Warmup Your Email the Right Way!
Email warm up can be a challenging process.
Even simply mistakes and oversights can cost you dearly!
The best way to avoid these mistakes?
Automated email warm up!
Now all you have to do to improve the sender reputation of your new email accounts is – Pick the right email warm up tool.
Personally, I suggest using TrulyInbox. It’s easy to use, works with all the top ESPs and is a hassle-free tool.
Most importantly, TrulyInbox is the only email warm up tool I’ve come across that lets you connect unlimited email accounts for warm up.
So, whether you want to warm up 1 account or 100, TrulyInbox could be your go-to tool!
Still on the fence? Then, give TrulyInbox a free try!
Happy warm up!
Email Warm Up Mistakes: FAQs
1. How is email warm up helpful?
In my experience, email warm up can help you in two ways. First, it allows you to quickly boost the sender reputation of your new email account. Second, it can help you repair the sending reputation of an old account you might have used for email outreach or cold emails.
2. How does email warm up work?
Email warm up is a simple strategy whose aim is to boost the sender reputation of email accounts. Here’s what you need to do to conduct email warm up:
- Set up your email and authenticate the security credentials
- Start sending a small number of emails to verified accounts with a high sender reputation
- Maintain conversational threads and gradually ramp up the daily sending volumes
- Keep the maximum number of emails to 50/day
- Monitor your sender reputation to verify that the email warm up is increasing your sender reputation
3. Can I manually warm up my email accounts?
Yes, you can manually warm up email accounts by engaging with other email accounts that enjoy a high sender reputation. However, in my experience, manual email warm up can be a very tedious process. The easier approach that has always worked for me is to automate the entire process through an email warm up tool. While it requires some initial investment, it guarantees results and takes guesswork out of the process!
4. Is using an email warm up platform the only way to avoid warm up mistakes?
In my opinion, yes: using an email warm up platform is the only way to (for sure) avoid all the warm up mistakes. That’s because the warm up tool sticks to very precise instructions that you provide: it’ll send a set number of emails, receive replies, and boost your sender reputation within weeks!
