But of all the opportunities afforded to companies to connect with prospects, generate leads, and build customer loyalty, nothing boasts more confidence than the opportunity for email marketing. However, there’s one thing that all effective email marketing campaigns depend on: deliverability. If you can’t deliver your emails, all that time spent connecting with prospects via email is for naught, they never see it; it’s lost in the spam folder. Email warm-up is generating credibility over time due to increased activity from a sender.
Thus, when a brand is newly formed or when a newly created email account is established for a pre-existing brand, that increased activity alerts the mail servers of Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. that this person or brand is not a spammer and that subsequent emails from them will be better received, delivered, and opened. This is basically a step-by-step guide to email warm-up and why it’s important to get better opens and avoid the spam folder.
Why Email Warm-Up is Crucial for High Open Rates
What do companies do wrong? Sending cold emails from a new even dormant account without a strategy. Companies generate an unprompted increase in sending volume, and ESPs Gmail, Outlook, etc. determine that something is off. Deliverability suddenly decreases, and the likelihood of the email being flagged as spam and subsequently reported increases. This is where email warmup comes into play. Email warmup gradually acclimates an email account to a natural level of genuine sending over time.
It starts with a few sends and builds to a threshold, establishing a reputation over time. It becomes familiar to the ESPs as a genuine sender, not a lunatic. In addition, a warmed-up domain will have lower bounce rates, higher engagement, and increased inbox placement. When emails aren’t going to junk folders and are actually being opened and replied to, it increases the sender’s score, which will increase open rates for legitimate future efforts down the line.
How Email Service Providers Determine Spam Risks
Emails land in inboxes instead of promotions and spam folders as a result of complicated algorithms since email service providers (ESPs) evaluate an unlimited number of factors: sender reputation, email content, and engagement from recipients all come into play. However, the overriding factor for deliverability is sender reputation. Thus, for example, if an email address has a reputation that indicates it is a spammer (i.e., many complaints of spam, a great deal of bounced messages, sudden increases in sending overnight), the ESPs automatically place the email in a spam folder.
In addition, all spam trigger words, disconnected selling, and misleading subject lines are sent to spam by the ESPs, with the original sender having no recourse to appeal. Another reason that warm-up is necessary relates to engagement statistics. If a person is opening emails and responding to them and forwarding them to others often enough, the ESPs view this as positive engagement.
If people aren’t opening these emails and instead are deleting them or marking them as spam, the ESP is more likely to think the next email from this sender is spam. Email warm-up avoids all of this since it champions engagement statistics. The ideal warm-up schedule has these emails opened and responded to at such a great percentage that the ESPs understand this sender means business.
How to Maintain a Strong Sender Reputation After Warm-Up
Yet warming up an email account with a company like Warmy.io isn’t a cure-all for deliverability. If a company fails to fix its email hygiene and fails to communicate with its subscribers to maintain a sender score, the results down the line can be disastrous from an email perspective. Meaning, months later people aren’t opening emails or, even worse, certain recipients who are receiving unsolicited emails weeks and months later are marking them as spam. This is mostly accomplished by maintaining a consistent sending history ESPs become suspicious of sudden spikes. Therefore, instead of an increase overnight to hundreds with everything sent all at once, incremental increases over time are always better.
A consistent sending history protects one’s sender score and makes sure one doesn’t end up in a spam folder. Another critical component is assessing engagement open rates, reply rates, and spam complaints. When a company sees a drop in engagement or a rise in spam complaints, it’s time to refresh. Subject lines and body copy can be adjusted, more in-depth audience targeting and niche targeting can be applied, and long-standing email lists can be screened for non-responders and bounced emails. Additionally, to ensure deliverability post-warm-up, a not-as-aggressive emailing campaign needs to be set forth. Deceptive subject lines, excessive purchase-triggering keywords, or repetitive follow-ups inundate users and generate additional spam flags.
Thus, companies must have realistic sales tactics and, thereafter, email initiatives to ensure legitimate interest. This allows companies to preserve their sender score months after the warm-up. Once established in the email service providers’ good graces, the likelihood of being directed to the inbox instead of the spam folder grows over time, lending great efficacy to cold email campaigns.
The Role of Warm-Up Tools in Email Deliverability
But since this is tedious and repetitive work, there exist warm-up services for email. These automated services facilitate the process for the sender as over time, they build the sender reputation of an email account based on the emails sent to other vetted accounts that read and engage with the returned emails. Thus, the warm-up services eliminate the necessity for human adjustments, provide genuine feedback on emails sent flagging them as spam or clicking the red exclamation point and prevent an increase in daily sending capacity after a certain percentage overnight.
In addition, warm-up services, alike, tend to have their own reporting features to assess sender score, notify of issues and adjust warm-up services. If your business needs cold outreach, then sales prospecting and email marketing campaigns, warm-up tools are essential. Warm-up tools will allow you to do it automatically and then avert deliverability disasters later on after you’ve baked the account for more extensive outreach.
Common Mistakes That Harm Email Deliverability
Yet even with a proper warm-up process, there are failures that put email deliverability at risk. For example, one of the largest failures is not warming up at all and going too fast. When a company feels comfortable and immediately sends out hundreds of emails, everything that was achieved during a warm-up is lost in seconds. Another huge failure is a bad email list or a purchased email list. Sending emails to sub-par addresses only increases bounce rates and makes the sender look bad; instead, companies need to be sending to those quality contacts with whom they’ve engaged previously good contacts and those who opted in to receive the correspondence.
This is problematic because without email authentication, ESPs can’t know who’s on the other end. Without an SPF, DKIM, or DMARC, ESPs see them as unknown, as scammers, so they get blacklisted or sent to spam. You need email authentication to avoid spam. This is problematic because without monitoring engagement, brands have no idea if they’re succeeding. If people aren’t opening their emails and there’s a high spam rate, then something is wrong and strategy needs to change. This is important because there is a temporal aspect to email marketing; evaluating and monitoring performance makes email marketing feasible.
Long-Term Benefits of a Properly Warmed-Up Email Account
When a properly warmed-up email account happens, the company benefits later on as well. A solid sender reputation means that emails get through and in the future, land, without fail, in the inbox, signifying proper engagement and, in the end, conversions. In addition, having the opportunity to send more down the line will be a plus when combined with a solid sender reputation, as companies will never have to fear automatic spam filters. Their reputation will carry them forward and allow them to exceed. In addition, a warmed email account adds to your credibility.
If clients see your warm-up campaign email when they get it (not in spam), and in due time, they’re more inclined to open it and respond because there’s already a relationship established. This fosters a connection, and more effective email marketing can occur from that relationship. So, to ensure success, better deliverability, and more effective email marketing for any future email outreach campaign, include an email warm-up.
Mastering Email Warm-Up for Effective Outreach
Email warm-up is one of the crucial yet seldom thought about aspects of email marketing. E-commerce companies that don’t warm up their email accounts will have low deliverability and engagement, and everything they try to accomplish will be for naught. E-commerce companies that take the time to gradually establish their email account’s sender reputation using warm-up tools for confirmation will have much higher open rates and avoid the spam box. With countless digital competitors and endless prospects relying on a message hitting someone’s inbox, email warm-up is essential. Companies that have their email accounts properly warmed up will be poised for guaranteed long-term deliverability as they’ll be reliably sent to the proper people at the proper times. Furthermore, with warm-up best practices and consistently assessed outcomes, companies will possess the cold email outreach ability they’ve always desired.