One of the most effective strategies to prevent your emails from ending up in spam folders is to warm up your email account before you send out your cold email campaigns.
In this article, we’ll go over how you can use AI-powered email warmup to improve deliverability and the reputation of your emails.
What Is Email Warmup?
Email warmup is the process of establishing a reputation for an email address in order to increase its (daily) email sending limit. Sure, this can be done manually, but it’s a tedious process that’s best left to automated systems. It’s also recommended that you continue email warmup after you start doing cold outreach, so automated email warmup is a huge time saver not just at the start but over the long run.
AI-powered warmup functions as a means to mimic human conversations between email accounts. You can think of it as you emailing back and forth with your friends, but fully automated.
Why You Need Email Warmup
Builds and Maintains Email Reputation
Building up the reputation of your sending domain is one of the main goals of email warmup because a good reputation means that your emails are more likely to be delivered to the inbox.
When you have a new domain or a new IP address, your emails may be marked as spam because you don’t have a good reputation yet. By sending a small number of carefully crafted emails and gradually increasing the volume over time, you can build up a good reputation.
Improves Deliverability
Along with building up your reputation, email warmup also improves deliverability. Email warmup basically tells mailbox providers that you’re a real sender and not a spammer.
If you were to start sending a large volume of emails from a new domain or IP address all at once, it would look suspicious to mailbox providers, and your emails would be more likely to be marked as spam. By slowly increasing the volume over time, you’re more likely to get your emails delivered to the inbox.
Increase the Volume of Emails You Can Send
By improving deliverability and building up a good reputation, email warmup enables you to reach more people with your cold emails.
If your emails are constantly getting marked as spam, you’re not going to reach very many people. But if your emails are getting delivered to the inbox, you’ll be able to reach a lot more people and potentially get more responses.
Reduces the Chance of Your Email Getting Flagged as Spam
One of the main benefits of email warmup is that it reduces the chance of your email getting flagged as spam.
When you’re sending a cold email, there’s always a risk that it will get marked as spam. But if you’ve been warming up your email account and building up a good reputation, the chances of your email getting flagged as spam are much lower.
How to Do Email Warmup Manually
While we don’t recommend doing email warmup manually, it is possible. Be warned that this is a strenuous process that is easily resolved by using an email warmup service like the free one included with Instantly. Regardless, understanding the process behind email warmup will give you insight into how the AI-powered solution works. Email warmup hinges on positive interactions between your sending domain, ideally with high open rates and response rates.
Here’s how it’s done manually:
- Find 20-30 people you can safely send emails to who will also engage with your emails. Engagement includes things like marking emails as important and sending you responses.
- Ask for their participation in your email warmup campaign and send them detailed instructions on how they can help you out.
- Start sending out emails to this group of people in small volumes.
- Slowly increase the # of emails you send over 2-3 weeks (or longer).
Email Warmup Campaign Instructions for Participants
- Open your emails
- Open Your Emails
- If they land in spam, mark as not spam
- Mark each email as important
- Send meaningful replies (not filler text)
- Forward emails to someone they know
By any combination of the above tasks on a consistent basis, you’ll be able to safely increase the number of emails you send out every day. We recommend starting out with just 2 emails per day on a fresh domain and then increasing that number until you’re sending 80-100 emails per day.
AI-Powered, 100% Automated Email Warmup
AI-powered email warmup is as simple as clicking a button!
With AI-powered email warmup, you can rest easy knowing all of your emails will be opened and a high percentage of them will respond to you with thoughtful, positive sentiments. The emails that are written by the Instantly AI algorithm signal to Google, Outlook and other email service providers that your email account and sending domain are relevant and legitimate.
Since you’ll be sitting comfortably with a 100% open rate and an exceptionally high response rate, emails in your future campaigns will have a higher likelihood of reaching main inboxes. Cold email campaigns sent from newer domains often end up in spam folders, but with AI-powered email warmup, you can run full-scale email outreach on a brand new domain within 2-3 weeks.
Additionally, the odds of your domain being flagged as spam or penalised by SMTP are greatly reduced, making the average lifespan of an outreach domain longer than manual warmup methods.
Email Warmup Never Ends
When should you turn off email warmup? Simple: Never!
Email warmup allows your domain to uphold its good reputation by building trust with mailbox providers. Once you've reached the "inbox" with your emails, you still need to prove to mailbox providers that your content is valuable and not spammy. The best way to do this is by maintaining a consistent sending history and keeping your bounce rate low.
Key Takeaways
Email warmup has a massive impact on your campaign success with no downsides. If you want to take your email outreach to the next level, AI-powered email warmup is a no-brainer.
To recap, here’s why you should run email warmup for every sending domain you use:
- Email warmup is the process of building trust with mailbox providers so your email has a higher chance of landing in the inbox.
- Email warmup can be done manually, but it’s a strenuous process that’s easily resolved by using an email warmup service.
- AI-powered email warmup is as simple as clicking a button and allows you to focus on your email campaigns rather than worrying about deliverability.
- Email warmup never ends—it’s important to maintain a consistent sending history and keep your bounce rate low to uphold your good reputation
If you’re looking to improve your email deliverability (especially on new domains), AI-powered email warmup is the best solution. Try it for yourself today with Instantly!
