Why and How to Warm Up Your Inbox and Email Account

Here’s a scenario: You’ve got a list of thousands of email addresses, but you’re new to email marketing. Since you have an email Service Provider (ESP) account, you think you can already send emails to your list.

Well, not so fast!

Don’t just open the floodgates. Instead, your email account has to be warmed up first to ensure that your cold email campaign will be successful over time and you won’t have delivery issues, bounces, or issues complaints.

However, you might ask, “Why should I warm up your inbox and email account apart from those reasons? How do I even do it?”

In this guide, you’ll find out why and how to warm up your inbox and email account and the exact process.

Let’s begin!

Email Warm-Up: Why It Matters

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Email warmup is establishing a reputation for a new email account and eventually increasing its sending limit.

Email service providers give daily limits to users when they create a new email account. Google provides 2,000 emails daily for a G Suite account. However, you can’t send it all in just a day. Instead, you get a smaller sending limit.

Therefore, you still need to do an email warm-up to build a good sending reputation and use the platform to its full potential.

It takes about eight to 12 weeks to reach maximum deliverability. However, the email account gets ready faster for a maxim sending capacity, depending on the engagement and email volume during the warm-up process.

Moreover, email warm-up is essential when planning to run a significant cold email outreach with a new account. The process ensures that your emails will land in the primary inbox and not in the spam folder.

Simply put, email warm-up likewise builds or repairs your sender’s reputation. ESPs, like Outlook and Gmail, check a sender’s reputation before allowing an email through.

At the start — upon creating an email account, you have a neutral sender reputation. From then on, the ESPs will evaluate you and your recipients for every action to score your sending reputation.

Lastly, email warm-up improves your account’s deliverability and prevents you from ending up in spam filters.

Related: An Email Marketers’ Guide To Fighting Against Spam Filters

Two Main Ways to Warm-Up Emails

Here are the two main ways to warm up an email inbox:

• Manually

The first method is to warm up manually. Once you set up your new email account, you‘ll manually send emails to your coworkers, reply to incoming emails, subscribe to newsletters, and create an entirely genuine engagement signal in your new inbox.

Moreover, your goal is to ram up your sending volume slowly. Over time, the email providers, like Gmail and Outlook, will trust your account.

• Automatically

The second method is to warm up automatically. You can do this by using a mail warm-up tool like InboxAlly.

Email warm-up tools generate actual daily activity in the user’s inbox. Doing so helps users reach more customers and leads faster than manually.

Every day, the email warm-up tool will send emails in low volume to other users in their network. This process then shows the email service providers that the user is trustworthy, eventually boosting one’s email deliverability.

An email warmup tool is best for marketers, sales experts, recruiters, and lead generation professionals.

How to Warm Up an Email Account

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1. Offer Something Valuable Before Asking for Anything

Some email recipients don’t like receiving an email that tells them to do something. The recipients feel like they have to take time out of their busy day to do something that may or may not benefit them.

As an email marketer, your emails (especially the first few ones) should provide value to your recipients. As a result, the readers will see how that will benefit them and are less likely to mark it as spam.

All relationships, including business, start somewhere. If you’re reaching out first, at least offer something valuable to your recipients before asking for anything. Some marketers do this by making a special offer.

2. Build Credibility

The next step you can take to warm up your inbox is to build your credibility. Ask yourself, why should the recipients listen to you?

You may briefly build credibility about why you’re essential or who you are. If you give your recipients any accomplishments to add credibility to your email, do so.

Briefly, building your credibility increases the level of attention that potential customers will give to your cold emails. Doing this means that you are more likely to generate a warm response.

3. Gradually Increase Sending Volume

Since you can’t launch a full-scale cold outreach yet during an email warm-up, gradually increasing your sending volume is the best solution. This process helps avoid raising red flags to the ESPs.

Will this make your cold email campaigns more effective?

Yes, gradually increasing the sending volume of a new email account does make cold email campaigns more effective. The process ensures that most of your emails will land in the inbox of your recipients and not in their spam folders.

If you gradually increase the sending volume, it also lessens your chance of triggering the spam filters since you’re not acting like a robot.

Moreover, the time interval between the last email sent to the new one prevents your account from being blocked temporarily or permanently.

4. Keep Your Warm-up Enabled

You should keep your warm-up enabled even if you’ve already reached your target delivery rate.

If you’re using a warm-up service, continue to use such. That way, the tool will continue to send automated messages that level out potential changes in your sender score and guarantee a high engagement rate.

5. Authenticate Your Account

Account authentication is essential, especially if you have a new email account. Authentication keeps your emails delivered to the inbox and the account against spam filters.

The four basic email authentication you can prioritize as you warm up your email are as follows:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF is an authentication technique designed to restrict people who can use the organization’s domain as their email source. It also blocks spammers and other attackers from sending emails that look like they are from a legitimate organization.

• DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)

DKIM is an authentication protocol that adds a digital signature to a domain. This authentication technique helps your email reach the right place (not spam folders) and prevents email spoofing.

• DMARC (Domain Keys Identified Mail)

DMARC is another email authentication protocol that uses your SPF and DKIM records. Its purpose is to assure the receivers’ ESPs that no fraudulent activities are linked to your email account.

• Custom Domain

A custom domain for your emails makes your documents and links more authentic or makes you, the sender, an accurate source.

For more information on how these email protocols keep email servers secure, check out our article about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

6. Maintain Conversation Threads

Email accounts are for sending and receiving messages. Therefore, creating engagement during the warm-up process is significant to achieve maximum deliverability.

So, begin a conversation by sending emails using other email accounts and replying to those messages from the new one.

Maintaining the conversation thread for eight to 12 weeks is vital to improving your email deliverability. Add a new email address on your site to achieve a better conversation rate and quickly reply to those emails.

This process is simple, yet the effect is profound in your deliverability because they are authentic email activities. Gradually, the process makes your email account eligible to send mass emails without landing in spam.

7. Set Up a Test Campaign

After completing the manual warm-up of your new email accounts for 12 weeks, these accounts will already be ready to send cold emails.

Pick the right email deliverability tool or an email warm-up tool to help you with the next step. That is, setting up a test campaign.

Next, start the first campaign with a small list of about 20 to 30 trusted recipients. It’d be better if these recipients were your friends and colleagues so that you can guarantee a response.

Your primary goal for this step is to make your recipients open your message and reply. Personalization will do this; it makes the message sound human. It’s also so much better if you use a personalized subject line to achieve the best open rate.

In your test campaign, avoid spammy content and add an unsubscribe link. Although a small list will only receive it, it allows your recipients to unsubscribe if they don’t want to receive emails from you.

It keeps your campaigns away from spam filters and makes your recipients happy.

7 Best Bonus Practices

Here are other non-negotiables to run a successful campaign with good deliverability:

1. Inspire action

You may land in the inbox, but you can’t still be successful in email marketing if your subscribers don’t take the action you want them to. Sometimes, you need to give your audience a little push.

Therefore, design your emails in such a way that your readers know what to do next. Is it to download an eBook? Should they share your story in their network? Do they have to register for a webinar? Whatever you want them to do, ask for it!

That’s what calls-to-actions (CTAs) are for, such as a simple text or button. Test them, as well. Most of the time, the fewer the CTAs, the more attention they get. The placement and design of the CTA also matter.

2. Design emails for accessibility

Remember that you have a diverse audience. Sending messages to these audiences goes beyond simple personalization and segmentation.

Therefore, make your email accessible. You can add ALT text to your images to help the recipients understand the content better and balance the image contrast ratio.

3. Focus on the right metrics

How do you know if your email marketing campaign is successful? You use the right metrics. We suggest you track opens, bounce rate, clicks, and unsubscribers.

Some marketers use heat mapping to know where their audience reads or clicks. Still, the right metrics for you depend on your goal.

4. Clean your email list regularly

Some of your email lists may not unsubscribe, but you must open your messages. However, keeping these least-engaged recipients on your list will eventually impact your deliverability and make your campaign look forced.

Therefore, reviewing your list and removing those not engaging is the best solution.

5. Name the offer in your subject line

If you have an offer to your recipients, include it in the subject line. Doing so increases your open rate drastically. Other good examples of incentive-focused subject lines are “Receive a free [offer] with a demo” and “First time shipping? We’ll cover the shipping!”

6. Make a schedule

Stick to a consistent time or schedule if you plan to send a recurring newsletter. This rule applies whether you’re sending to your subscribers monthly, weekly, or daily (although it can be a little too much for a sending frequency).

7. Have a “view in browser” link

Add a “view in browser” link to your email. If possible, put it at the top to ensure that you can solve potential rendering issues by clicking through that link.

Always Reach the Inbox with InboxAlly

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You know by now that an email warmup is essential to any email campaign. Prospects are likelier to open and read your email and take action if you warm up your inbox or email account.

And if you genuinely want to improve your email deliverability, tap into a platform that offers more features than email warming. And that’s where tools like InboxAlly, come in.

InboxAlly is the ultimate deliverability tool that can be integrated into your email and teaches the email providers to put your emails in the inbox from the start.

Additionally, InboxAlly engages with your emails, allows you to track the progress of your campaign out of the spam folder, and sees your open rate more than double within one to two weeks.

Skyrocket your deliverability today! Try us for free and see how you can reach people’s inboxes, not the spam folder.