Buying new domains is the best way to scale cold email outreach campaigns. But the one thing you don’t want to do is immediately use these new domains to send cold emails.
Email service providers (ESP) see that as a red flag. You’ll end up burning new domains and have them added to a global blacklist. Warming up email domains avoids all these issues.
What is Email Domain Warmup
When domains send and receive emails, they grow their sending reputation. It’s something that occurs naturally. However, doing warmup manually takes a lot of time.
Domains can have up to three email accounts. Each account can send 30 to 50 emails daily. If done manually, you’d have to send emails back and forth—for three to four weeks.
That’s a lot of emails. It’s going to take hours off your day. The best way to warm up your email domains is to automate the process. Instantly does that with a single click. We’ll get to that later!
Why is Email Domain Warmup a Non-Negotiable?
You need to warmup when you buy new domains for email marketing. It isn’t a suggestion. It’s a non-negotiable. Doing so gets you the following benefits:
Improved deliverability
Even the best, hyper-personalized copy won’t do you any favors if the email doesn’t land in your prospects’ inboxes. Not warming up domains means low deliverability. When enough emails don’t land in your prospects’ inboxes, your IP or entire domain can be flagged as spam.
Better SpamAssassin Score
SpamAssassin is one of the leading bodies for spam detection. Domains with consistent, positive warmup routines have better SpamAssassin scores. It evaluates how “spammy” your emails are based on wording, formatting, and domain reputation.
Reduced Bounce Rates
You want to see between 2-5% bounce rate for cold emails. ESPs trust domains with a positive sending reputation. The more emails land in inboxes, the lower the bounce rates. Positive email exchanges boost the sender's reputation, which is exactly what warmups do.
How to Warmup Email Domain With Instantly.ai
Instantly knows how to do cold emails and the importance of email domain warmups. That’s why we offer unlimited warmups to unlimited email accounts. All you need to do is click a button.
Head to the emails accounts tab on the left side of the Instantly dashboard. Find the email account you want to warmup, then click the fire icon. You can leave that on indefinitely.
You can adjust the warmup settings by clicking the gear icon. Instantly pre-defined settings are already good but you can tinker with the settings to adjust things like sends per day.
There are also advanced warmup settings to tinker with. You can enable:
- Weekdays only: Send warmup emails during the week
- Read emulation: Simulates human reading of warmup emails sent to you
- Warmup custom tracking domain: Settings for improving deliverability
Sudden spikes in sending volume can result in black-listed accounts. Google lets you send 500 emails daily per account. We don’t want to go near that number.
Stay within the 30-50 daily email volume range. After the warmup period is complete, always allocate sending volume for warmups. You could send 30 cold emails and 20 warmups daily.
The reason we do this is simple. Cold email, even with the best offer, is likely to have low replies and open rates. Warmups (having your emails opened and replied to positively) offset this issue.
But remember, you can’t warmup email domains that aren’t authenticated. You must set up domain authentications—DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and Forwarding first.
These authentications let your new domains send and receive emails. Authentication setups vary depending on where you bought domains.
You can read more about how to manually authenticate domains here.
What to Do After Email Domain Warmup
After the three to four-week period of domain warmup, you can finally use your new email accounts for cold outreach. But, there are things to consider such as the following:
Stay Within Daily Sending Limits and Allocate Volume for Warmups.
To be on the safer side and ensure you don’t burn your new email domains, Instantly launched a new feature called Campaign Slow Ramp.
Instead of a consistent sending volume, Campaign Slow Ramp gradually increases daily sending limits. This ensures healthy email reputation, trust with ESPs, and deliverability boosts.
A/B Test Cold Outreach Campaigns
Email warmup is only one factor that affects deliverability, open, and reply rates. If you consistently warmup accounts but have low deliverability, the issue could be email copy.
That’s why it’s crucial to A/B test elements of your email copy like the subject line, unique selling propositions, email closing lines, or CTAs. Instantly lets you A/B test different variations of emails in a single campaign.
You can also enable the auto-optimized A/B testing. Instantly finds your best-performing email variation and sends that to the rest of the leads in your campaign.
Scale Daily Sending Limits with More Domains
The safest and most cost-effective way to scale campaigns is by buying more domains and warming them up. The good news is that Instantly not only automates warmup.
Instantly DFY Domain Authentication service handles all authentications. All you need is to go to the Emails tab, click Done for You Setup, choose an alternate domain, and make your order.
It takes 24 to 72 hours for the DNS records to propagate. After that, you can start warming up your new domains and repeat the cycle when you’re ready to scale. It’s that easy with Instantly.
Key Takeaways
Email domain warmup is a cold outreach essential. It significantly improves deliverability, builds a positive sender’s reputation, and lowers spam scores. Warmup occurs naturally as we send and receive email. Tools like Instantly automate the process.
The biggest difference is that we offer unlimited warmups for unlimited email accounts. No need to pay extra for this feature. Just add more domains, warmup email accounts, and scale campaigns sustainably with Instantly.
