How the Email Warm Up Process Works: Step-by-Step Guide

If sending emails is a part of your daily workflow — whether for sales, outreach, or marketing — you’ve probably come across the term email warm-up.

But here’s the catch: a lot of people are still unsure about it.

• “Do I really need to warm up my email?”
• “Can’t I just start sending campaigns right away?”

These are valid questions — and the answers lie in understanding how the email warm-up process actually works.

Once you see what’s happening behind the scenes, it becomes clear that skipping it isn’t worth the risk.

Here’s what I’ll cover in this blog:

• How the email warm-up process looks (step by step)
• Manual vs. automated warm-up — which one makes sense?
• How to warm up multiple accounts at once.

If you’ve ever doubted whether a warm-up is necessary, this guide will clear things up.

What is Email Warm Up?

Email warm-up is the process of slowly building trust and credibility for your new or inactive email account with email service providers (like Gmail, Outlook, etc.).

If you’re sending or managing

• Cold emails
• Newsletters
• Outreach emails
• or any form of mass email campaign

Then, warming up your email accounts is a crucial step you cannot miss!

Properly Warmed Up Email Accounts = High Inbox Placement = Campaign Success!

How Does the Email Warm-Up Process Work?

The email warm-up process is not that complex to understand.

You gradually start sending emails from your new or inactive email account to other real, active business accounts — 1 to 3 emails per day per account.

Then increase the volume by 20% per day, until you reach the recommended limit.

• For cold emailing, it’s best to cap it at 35–50 emails/day per account.
• For email marketing, you can go up to 100 –150 emails/day.

These emails should:

• Get opened.
• Receive replies.
• Be marked as important or starred.
• Be removed from spam (if they land there).

Similarly, emails from other business accounts should be sent to your account — and you should engage with them too.

This way, you will be able to simulate natural human-like conversations, which is exactly what ESPs prefer.

There are two methods you can use to warm up your email accounts: the manual (hard) way or the automated (efficient) way. 

Continue reading to know which email warm-up process is best suited for you.

Manual vs Automated Warm Up: Which One Should You Use?

The email warm-up process may seem simple on paper — send a few emails, get a few replies, and increase the volume over time, easy, right?

Not quite.

There’s more happening behind the scenes, which is where the manual vs automated warm-up debate comes in.

In this section, I’ll break down how both methods work, the pros and cons of each, and help you decide which one makes the most sense for your setup.

1. Automated Warm-Up
2. Manual Warm-Up

1. Automated Email Warm-Up

If you want to save time and focus on other areas of your outreach strategy, automated warm-up is the smarter route.

You can use email warm-up tools to simulate human-like activity – sending emails, generating replies, pulling messages out of spam, and even marking them as important.

This helps build your sender reputation steadily without you having to do the heavy lifting.

Why should you choose automated warmup?

One simple reason — it warms up your email accounts properly without wasting your time.

Pros of Automated Email Warmup:

• You need to spend minimal time or effort on drafting, scheduling, or sending emails.
• Easily scalable in terms of both the number of emails and the number of inboxes.
• Gives you a detailed report on where your warmup emails are landing.

Cons of Automated Email Warmup:

• It’s a paid service.

2. Manual Email Warm-Up

In manual warm-up, you do everything by yourself.

It’s a hands-on process and takes up more of your time and energy.

When does manual warm-up make sense?

Truthfully, it doesn’t, in any case.

Even if you just have 1 or 2 email accounts to warm up, the effort needed to do it manually just isn’t worth it when you can automate the whole thing in a few clicks.

Think about it — automated tools have a network of high-reputation, aged email accounts that constantly interact with each other.

Doing this manually means building and maintaining that entire network yourself.

And frankly, that’s just not practical.

Automated vs. Manual Email Warmup – Which One is for You?

There’s no comparison.

Manual warm-up is slow, inconsistent, and impractical.

Automated warm-up is faster, smarter, and actually works — every time.

Also Read: 10 Best Email Warmup Services you can use to automate your email warmup.

Step-by-Step Process to Warm Up Multiple Email Accounts

Now that it’s clear automated email warm-up is the only option that truly makes sense, let me walk you through how you can warm up multiple email accounts at once.

It’s simpler than you think, especially if you’re using the right tool.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign Up for TrulyInbox
2. Connect Your Accounts
3. Set Up Your Warm-Up Strategy
4. Start the Warm-Up!

1. Sign Up for TrulyInbox

First, head over to TrulyInbox and sign up using an email account of your choice.

2. Connect Your Accounts

Next, connect the email accounts that need warm-up.

Here, you have two options: 

• Connect your Google and Microsoft Outlook accounts with TrulyInbox with just a few clicks.
• For other providers, you must manually set them up using the SMTP/IMAP process.

If you have multiple inboxes to connect, you can connect with TrulyInbox’s Support Team, and they will set up your accounts for you.

3. Set Up Your Warm-Up Strategy

After you’ve connected your email account with TrulyInbox, the next step is to choose some preferences about your email warmup process.

These include: 

• The number of emails you want to start sending.
• The number of emails you want to increase per day.
• The maximum number of emails you want to send per day.
• The reply rate.

4. Start the Warm-Up!

Once everything is set up, simply hit Start to begin the warm-up process.

The tool will take it from there — sending, replying, and gradually increasing volume for you.

That’s it – it’s done.

How to Know If Your Email Is Fully Warmed Up

A high sender reputation is the best indication that your email is fully warmed up: 

It means that the ESP has recognized that you’re sending relevant, spam-free emails to your recipients. 

Let me walk you through some email deliverability tools you can use to monitor your sender reputation: 

• Deliverability Metric Monitoring Tools: Both Google and Outlook offer native Postmaster platforms that help you measure your sender reputation, spam rate, and bounce rate.
• Inbox Placement Checker Tools: You can use tools like GlockApps and MailGenius to send test emails to determine whether they’re likely to land in inboxes or spam folders.

Common Mistakes to Avoid During Email Warm Up

To make sure that your email warmup has the best chance of increasing your sender reputation, here are some mistakes you should avoid at all costs:

• Sending too many warmup emails too soon.
• Not setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
• Sending emails to personal email accounts rather than B2B accounts.
• Not engaging with replies or not building conversational threads.
• Not using the right email warmup tool that mimics human-like sending patterns.

Warm Up Your Accounts to Achieve High Deliverability

If you’ve got the perfectly personalized cold emails waiting to generate warm leads, all you need is an inbox with a high sender reputation to match it.

Through this blog, I’ve walked you through the email warmup process that’ll help you do just that: 

Improve your inbox placement rate by increasing your sender reputation.

So, if you’re planning to scale your cold outreach efforts and want to start warming up your domain, why not explore TrulyInbox? 

In addition to flexible pricing plans and up to 97% email deliverability, you get: 

• Warmup for unlimited inboxes
• AI-generated personalized email copies
• A clean dashboard that helps you monitor deliverability

And a forever-free plan you can use to explore its features for yourself!

So, take a free trial (no credit card required), warm up your accounts, and start landing inboxes…

Email Warm Up Process: FAQ

1. Is email warmup the same as domain warmup?

No, email warmup is not the same as domain warmup: they are related processes that differ in scope and objectives.

• Email Warmup: Enhances the sender reputation of a single account by replicating human-like email-sending patterns. 
• Domain Warmup: Involves warming up multiple email accounts under a single domain.

2. How long does it take to warm up an email account?

Warming up an email account requires at least 2-4 weeks. This period of 15-30 days will allow you to gradually increase the number of warmup emails you’re sending without triggering the ESP’s spam filters. It’ll also allow you to monitor your sender reputation to verify that your warmup is working.

3. How many warmup emails should I send per day?

You should start by sending 2-3 emails per day and gradually increase by 15-20% every day until you reach 50 emails per day. I also recommend monitoring the bounce rates and engagement—if responses drop, scale back. Consistency and inbox health matter more than volume, so adjust based on your email provider’s limits and performance.

4. What is a good email warmup tool?

TrulyInbox is a good email warmup tool that lets you warm up unlimited inboxes, offers up to 97% email deliverability, and even comes with a forever-free plan.