Vatsal Shah If you’re going to start a new email campaign with new email accounts, email warm-up is a must!
Non-Negotiable!!
But what is email warm-up? What does it do, exactly? Is it absolutely necessary?… These are just some of the many questions you might have.
I had the same questions when I first started my journey into outreach—eager to learn, experiment, and improve my campaign results.
My journey was long, I had to unlearn convential concepts and relearn what actually works.
But you don’t have to go through the same trial and error.
I’ve put everything I learned into this comprehensive guide on email warm-up, breaking down each concept into simple, easy-to-apply steps.
So dive in!
Email Warmup – Table of Contents
- What is Email Warmup?
- Why Should You Warm Up Your Email Account?
- How to Warm Up Your Email Accounts?
- Best Tools for Automated Email Warmup
- Best Practices for Email Warmup
- Warm Up Your Email and Land In Inboxes!
- Email Warmup: FAQs
What is Email Warmup?
Just like how our prospects don’t immediately trust us when we try to offer them something, ESPs won’t trust your new email accounts right away.
You’ll have to show them you’re someone genuine and not here to spam their users, who happen to be the recipients of your email.
So how do you gain their trust (sender reputation)? By warming up your email accounts.
I’ll walk you through a bit more in detail about why you should warm up and how to do it in the below sections.
So keep reading!
Why Should You Warm Up Your Email Address?
Email warm up requires either time (manual warm up) or a little bit of money (automated warm up).
So why exactly should you invest your resources into email warm up? What’s the prize you get at the end?
Let’s find out:
- To Build or Repair Your Sender Reputation
- Helps You Avoid Spam Filters
- Keeps Your Email Accounts and Domains From Blacklists
1. To Build or Repair Your Sender Reputation
Sender reputation is a measure of your credibility with your email service providers.
Simply put, it’s the equivalent of a credit score for your email account.
The higher your sender reputation, the higher the chances that your emails will land in your recipient’s inboxes.
Now, I’ve experienced two common scenarios under which email warm up is critical. Let me walk you through both:
1. You Have a New Email Account
Since your account is brand new, ESPs might not know the purpose for which you’re going to use it.
And the best way to win the trust of the ESP?
To warm up your email accounts – exchange emails with existing email accounts that have a high sender reputation.
2. Your Existing Email Account Sender Reputation is Low
This is a very real scenario that even seasoned cold emailers face!
Email accounts that have been well-warmed and actively used for email campaigns can still experience a decline in sender reputation over time.
Why?
Because your sender reputation isn’t a permanent badge that ESPs have given as a sign of trust.
It will vary depending on a lot of factors like:
- Spam Complaints – Your recipients marking your emails as spam.
- Bounce Rates – Your emails are not getting delivered.
- Low Engagement – If your emails aren’t getting opened, replied to, or interacted with, ESPs assume they’re unwanted.
So, if you notice that your sender reputation has reduced, the best way to repair it is to use email warmup.
It’s the fastest way to get back in the good books of the ESPs!
2. Helps You Avoid Spam Filters
One of the most significant impacts of a poor sender reputation is that it puts you on the radar of spam filters.
Having a low sender reputation gives spam filters a strong reason not to trust you and put your emails in spam folders rather than the inbox.
If you notice that your emails are being sent to the spam folders of your recipients, that’s your cue to start taking action immediately!
So, what’s the easiest way to fix this?
You guessed it: using email warmup.
3. Keeps Your Email Accounts and Domains From Blacklists
Speaking of spam, I’ve often noticed that once an email account’s spam rate spikes, they’re are not far from being blacklisted.
Blacklists are usually complied by ESPs and cybersecurity companies who monitor spammy and malicious activity.
The real problem: once you’re on a spam blacklist, there’s no going back!
So, if you want to avoid a permanent ban on your email account, I recommend you take action at the first sign of something bad happening.
It’s a tried & tested way to boost the sender reputation and keep your email account off the spam blacklist!
How to Warm Up Your Email Accounts?
Okay, so you want to avoid spam filters and keep your email account out of spam blacklists. So, how can you do this?
Well, there are two ways to warm up email accounts. The first is the free but hard way (manual warmup), and the second is the paid but easy way (automated warmup).
Let me walk through both of them:
1. Manual Email Warmup
If you want to warm up your email accounts for free, then a manual warmup might be the method for you.
But I have to warn you: it’s very tedious and, in my experience, not too efficient either!
I highly recommend that you take a look at Automated Email Warm Up for a hassle-free warm-up experience.
Nevertheless, as promised, let’s understand how manual warm up works:
- Authenticate Your Email Security Credentials
- Send Emails to Accounts with High Sender Reputation
- Gradually Ramp Up the Volume of Your Emails
- Monitor Deliverability Metrics
1. Authenticate Your Email Security Credentials
The first thing you need to do is secure your email account by setting up authentication protocols.
There are three important credentials you should establish:
- SPF: The Sender Policy Framework helps ensure that your email account is not spoofed and used for phishing attacks.
- DKIM: The DomainKeys Identified Network is like a passport for your email account. It ensures that only the domains you have authorized can send emails from your account.
- DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance builds on DNS, SPF and DKIM protocols to verify email senders.
Now, a common question that arises is whether you need to establish all three protocols or use any one of them.
In my opinion, if you’re planning to use your email account to send a high volume of emails, you should consider setting up all three protocols for extra layers of email security.
2. Send Emails to Accounts with High Sender Reputation
Once you’ve set up your email account with the requisite security protocols, it’s time to start sending warm up emails.
To start with, I recommend you send emails exclusively to established accounts with a high sender reputation.
The reason behind this is simple: if existing accounts open and reply to emails from your shiny new account, it tells the ESP that your email is a trusted source of communication!
In my experience, starting small with 3 to 5 emails is the best.
3. Gradually Ramp Up the Volume of Your Emails
This step is extremely important!
Once you have started sending emails, you should gradually increase the number of emails you’re sending every day.
I recommend a 15 to 20% increase a day, till you hit 50 emails/day.
Why should you do it gradually and not quickly?
It’s called warm up, it’s not yet a race, so take it slow.
4. Monitor Deliverability Metrics
Now that you’ve done all the hard work, it’s time to check up on the results.
So, how do you know whether your email warm-up is working or not?
The trick is to periodically check your email sender reputation throughout the warm-up process.
You can do this by using various deliverability monitoring tools, I recommend using Google PostMaster Tools as it is free and a native product of Gmail.
It will give you insights into your sender reputation, domain reputation, spam rate, etc.
So that’s how you do manual warmup, quite a lot I know!
I have shared a much easier alternative below, so take a look.
2. Automated Email Warmup
By now, you would have surely understood why I warned you about manually warming up.
I still get the chills when I think of the days when I used to do it manually.
Luckily, you don’t have to go through it!
You can use an email warm up platform to completely automate everything:
- Gradually increasing sending volume
- Maintaining conversation threads
- Marking your emails as important and starring them.
- Getting your emails out of spam folders if they do end up in spam during warm up.
Basically, an email warm up tool will take care of improving your sender reputation with ESPs.
So, all you have to do is connect your new email accounts with a good email warmup tool and wait!
Best Tools for Automated Email Warmup
In this section, I’ll walk you through few tools that can take care of the entire warm up process for you.
To help you make an informed decision, I’ve listed below the five best email warm up tools that have stood out to me
Let’s check out how they stack up:
1. TrulyInbox
Deliverability Rate: 98%
TrulyInbox is a simple and elegant solution to email warmup. All you need to do is connect your email account or domain with TrulyInbox and you’re all set!
One reason I like TrulyInbox is that it gives you complete control over the warmup process. You can choose the:
- Email volume
- Reply rate
- Daily ramp-up volume
And the best part?
TrulyInbox lets you connect an unlimited number of email accounts to your warm-up process!
Pricing (Billed Annually):
- Starter: $22/month
- Growth: $59/month
- Scale: $142/month
- Business: $217/month
Check out the pricing page to know more!
2. Warmy.io
Deliverability Rate: 95%
If you’re looking for an email warmup tool that can personalize email content, Warmy.io is a great option. It also offers industry-specific email warm-up templates.
Plus, Warmy.io doesn’t use email accounts created specifically for email warmup. Instead, it uses a network of email accounts belonging to real people!
Pricing:
The only real downside to Warmy.io is that it offers custom volume-based pricing.
So, if you’re looking to warm up more than one email account, the cost can multiply quickly!
3. Warmup Inbox
Deliverability Rate: 93%
Warmup Inbox is an easy-to-use email warm-up tool. It is compatible with a host of ESPs, and works with any email inbox with an SMTP configuration setup!
Warmup Inbox uses AI to generate human-like email interactions and conversation threads to warm up your email accounts.
Along with a vibrant interface, it also offers you language-specific warm-up options.
So, if you’re looking to break into new markets with a cold email campaign, Warmup Inbox might be useful!
Pricing (Billed Annually):
Warmup Inbox charges you separately for every inbox that you want to warm up. Here’s how the pricing breaks down:
- Basic: $15/month/inbox
- Pro: $49/month/inbox
- Max: $79/month/inbox
Best Practices for Email Warmup
This section is a must read if you want your email warm up to be successful.
Although email warmup tools can help you automate the process, you’re still in control of the entire exercise.
To help you get the best results for high deliverability, here are some best practices I highly recommend you follow:
- Use a Dedicated IP Address
- Avoid Using Spammy Content
- Use a Proper Email Warm-Up Tool
- Gradually Increase Your Email Volume
- Monitor Your Metrics Regularly
1. Use a Dedicated IP Address
An IP Address is your ticket to the internet.
You don’t think much about IP addresses when browsing the internet or sending an email, but it have a lot of impact on your sender and domain reputation.
Let me explain without going to much into the technicals!
When you buy a domain and create a new email account, you will be automatically given a sending IP that is shared with multiple other.
If some of them were to say, send spammy emails or involve in malicious activity.
Your sender reputation will also get hit badly!
The solution for this – get yourself a dedicated IP address. It’s a bit expensive but you won’t have to suffer because of others misbehavior
2. Avoid Using Spammy Content
A common reason why your emails end up in the spam folder is that they may contain spammy content.
What do you see when you open your spam folder?
A bunch of emails trying to sell you something you don’t need.
They use spammy words like “deal”, “offer”, “free”, etc.
Spam filters pick on these, and if your email has too much, then it goes straight to the spam folder
The best solution: Completely avoid using spammy words and keep your emails as conversational as possible.
3. Use a Proper Email Warm-Up Tool
In my experience, warm-up can be extremely useful if you regularly use your email accounts to send outreach emails and generate leads.
In other words, email warm-up isn’t just a one-time thing!
A proper email warm-up tool will provide you with an easy way out whenever you want to boost your sender reputation and increase email deliverability.
Plus, if you’re familiar with a reliable email warm-up tool, it’ll reduce the amount of time you need to invest in setting up a warm-up campaign.
It’s a win-win, whenever you need it!
4. Gradually Increase Your Email Volume
One common mistake I have seen many people make is to start with a large sending volume.
Doing this will get you a one-way ticket straight to the spam folder.
What you should be doing is starting with 3-5 emails/day and gradually increasing it by 20% to reach a maximum sending volume of 50 emails/day.
This way, you start slow and gradually increase your email volume.
5. Monitor Your Metrics Regularly
Whether you’re warming up manually or using a warm up platform, you should definitely monitor email deliverability key metrics.
Here’s what I recommend you keep your eyes on:
- Domain Reputation
- IP Reputation
- Spam rate
- Bounce rate
If you notice something going wrong, you should definitely take a look at your manual process.
In the case of an email warm up tool, reach out to the support team to get it resolved.upport team to get it resolved.
Warm Up Your Email and Land In Inboxes!
That sums up all I have on email warm up!
To Recap:
- Email warmup is really necessary to improve sender reputation of new email accounts.
- It can also help repair sender reputation of your email accounts after an email campaign.
- Using an email warm-up tool is much more efficient than doing warm up manually.
- If you still want to do it manually, make sure to follow the best practices.
Now, the only thing that’s left for you to do is select the right tool, warm up your emails, and land in the inboxes of your prospects…
From all the tools I’ve used, I suggest TrulyInbox: it’s simple with no-fluff features and gets the job done at a cost-efficient price.
And most importantly, it’s the only tool that lets you connect an unlimited number of inboxes!
Good luck!
Email Warmup: FAQs
1. How do I know if my email accounts are warmed up?
The easiest way to know if your email accounts are warmed up is to check their sender reputation throughout the warm-up process. If you notice a rise in your email reputation from week one to week four, it means your email warm up has worked, and you’re all set to send emails to your recipients!
2. Does email warm up actually work?
Yes! Email warm-up improves your deliverability in a very short period of time. I know this not only because I’ve tried it, but because I’ve personally tested several different email warm-up tools. The best tools have helped me achieve a deliverability rate of more than 95%!
3. How long does email warmup take?
In my experience, email warmup usually takes between 3-4 weeks. So, if you start your email warm up today, you should have a fully warmed-up email account within a month.
