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Email marketing can give you a big bang for your buck—$42 back for every $1 you spend! But there’s a catch: your emails actually have to be read, not stuck in spam or ignored. Many marketers lose out because their emails don’t reach people’s inboxes.
That’s where “email warmup” comes in—it’s like a workout for your email to help it get strong and reach more inboxes.
If you’re new to this or changing your email setup, warming up your email is a must. It’s all about slowly building trust so that email providers see you as a good sender, not a spammer.
This article will show you why warming up your email is key, no matter if you’re just starting out or you’ve been sending emails for years.
Let’s dive into what email warmup is, why it’s so important, and how to do it right, so more of your emails end up where they should be—in front of your readers.
Email warmup is a strategic process essential for establishing a solid sender reputation with a new email account or domain. It involves gradually increasing the volume of emails sent to a select list of known recipients who are likely to engage positively with your messages.
This careful pacing helps avoid triggering spam filters and assures Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your email activity is legitimate.
By sending emails to engaged inboxes that open, reply to, or interact with your emails, you significantly boost your sender reputation. This positive engagement is critical as it signals to ISPs that your emails are trustworthy and welcomed by recipients.
Ultimately, a successful warmup process allows you to increase email volumes while maintaining strong deliverability and presence in your subscribers’ primary inboxes.
Side Note: Automated warmup services like Mailivery streamline this process by leveraging a large network of inboxes guaranteed to engage with your emails. This can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your email warmup phase, ensuring faster and more reliable improvements to your sender reputation.
An email address with a good reputation has an average response rate of 5% to 10%. While for cold email outreach, these typically only have a 1% response rate.
That's a massive drop in performance that can make or break the return on investment (ROI) of your email marketing efforts.
When emails don't make it to inboxes, you're leaving tons of potential engagement and lost revenue on the table. To top it off, continuously firing emails only to be marked as spam and never reaching your prospect’s inbox can further damage your sender reputation.
But the good news is that there's a powerful solution for building up and maintaining a strong sender reputation over time.
By doing proper warmup, you can boost your average response rate, avoid being flagged as spam, and land in the inbox more often.
But who exactly needs warmup, and why is it so crucial? Let's dive in.
While email warmup should be a universal practice for all email marketers, it’s absolutely crucial in the following situations:
If you’re an email marketer who is planning to start launching campaigns from a newly created email, sending domain or IP address, then warmup needs to be a top priority. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) closely monitor new senders for any spammy behaviors. Trying to launch into high volume sending right away will immediately get you flagged and blocked from inboxes.
A proper warmup process is vital for new email senders as this will help gradually authenticate your email streams and build a positive reputation through calculated steps of low volume, engagement-driven sending. This prevents triggering any spam traps while allowing ISPs to verify you as a legitimate, trustworthy sender over time.
If you're considering moving your email streams over to a new Email Service Provider (ESP), keep in mind that your previous sender reputation will not transfer over. Any changes made to your email or domain directly causes your sender reputation to be ‘reset’ - this means that you'll be starting from square one and will be building up your reputation again from scratch.
When switching ESPs or platforms, warmup is an absolute must. Conducting proper warmup for the new email will allow you to rebuild a secure foundation and maintain inbox placement without any interruptions from having a cold start. This means being able to resume your usual campaigns and not having to potentially lose engagements by not risking the possibility of spam filters blocking your account.
This can be broken down into two categories:
a. Senders with Inconsistent Sending:
Even if you previously had a good standing with your sender reputation, it could degrade into a ‘cold’ status after long periods of inactive or inconsistent sending. Just like with newly created emails, attempting to skyrocket high volume sending right off the bat will trigger spam filters due to the sudden ‘unusual’ activity.
Trying to kick things into high gear again, after a significant period of inactivity, with no warmup will make you look like a spammer even to ISPs who were used to your old normal volumes.
b. Senders with Consistent Sending:
Even if you've been sending consistently, a huge increase or spike in sending volumes can be enough to get spam filters questioning your authenticity. Warmup gradually builds up your reputation scores to be able handle these higher volumes, without triggering spam filters.
Any major deviation from your normal sending patterns needs to be warmed up appropriately. This ensures positive engagement signals keep up with your volume ramp.
Bonus tip: Mailivery offers a ramp-up feature which automatically warms up accounts by increasing sending limits over time to avoid getting flagged as spam. Our ramp-up handles scheduling and automates proper pacing so you can focus on creating campaigns without having to worry about setting up the prior incremental sending.
This pertains to those senders who are experiencing not-so-ideal performance metrics due to low engagement or even those whose reputation may have taken a blow due to a bad campaign that was previously launched. Too many bounces, complaints, low open rates etc. act as red flag signals that you may not be a trustworthy sender.
Your email engagement levels are one of the factors that directly affect your sender reputation. This is where email warmup comes into play by resetting your reputation to a better rank. Warmup helps offset negative campaign performance and build your reputation back up to a ‘natural’ state through positive interactions (emails being opened, getting replies, not landing in spam, etc).
While the initial warmup period can range from 2 – 12 weeks, email warmup is not a one-time event. It's an ongoing process of continually maintaining the key factors that define a good sender reputation, including:
Your true goal is not to warm up an email but to bring the email to a natural state by means of a natural overall average response rate.
Email warmup can be one of those things that's easy to overlook or deprioritize when you're eager to start sending emails. However, it’s important to understand that warmup is an absolute necessity—no matter what situation you find yourself in as an email marketer.
Regardless of whether you’re a fresh sender or a seasoned marketer, having proper warmup lays the groundwork for consistent inbox placement, high engagement rates, and maximum ROI. With the right warmup process and solution, you can seamlessly build and maintain a positive sender reputation for peak performance throughout your campaigns.
The easiest way to get responses to your cold emails.
