Let’s say that you have an amazing email campaign planned out for a new product or service launch. And you have gathered high-quality lead data to pitch your offer to thousands of business owners. But did you know that sending thousands of emails could risk your domain reputation resulting in your IP getting blacklisted?
Without gaining a good sending reputation, you are losing out on profits you could have earned with every cold email landing in the spam. You are wasting your valuable time and money on writing emails and buying leads if your emails are not getting delivered to the inbox in the first place.
So, how do you ensure that your emails get delivered?
Email deliverability directly depends on your email copy, email type, and domain reputation.
And if you have a new IP, things can get trickier. The chances of your emails reaching your prospects’ inboxes are drastically reduced because ESPs have no data on your domain reputation. In other words, the success of your email marketing campaign depends on the history of your domain’s health.
So, how do you maintain a genuine domain reputation for your email marketing success? The answer is email IP warming.
Without warming up your IP, you could risk your sender's reputation, meaning all your emails could be spam. ESPs keep a close eye on your email activity and IP address to ensure you are not sending generalized emails in large volumes.
Besides, a warmed-up domain signals the ESPs (Internet Service Providers) that:
- You are not a spammer
- You send emails that have some value, and
- You have a positive sender reputation - that your domain is trustworthy.
What is IP warming?
IP warming or IP warmup involves sending emails from your domain, which could be new or old, according to formulaic schedules to increase your email sending volumes without being detected by the spam filters.
IP warming helps you build a positive reputation for your IP address so that your emails land in your recipient’s inbox instead of the promotions and spam folders.
So, email IP warming helps you set up your email domain before you send your emails to your leads. You can boost your email engagement and response rates with a properly warmed-up IP domain, which helps ensure high email deliverability.
Why is IP warming so important?
Because it helps you build trust with the ESPs.
Keep the spam filters away: Sending an increasing number of emails over a certain period before starting your actual campaign helps you build an authentic domain reputation so that the chances of your emails landing in spam are drastically reduced.
Maintain a high deliverability rate: IP warming empowers you to prove that your domain is a reliable email-sending domain, so you can send large volumes of emails without drawing the ESP’s suspicions. Once you gain the trust of the ESPs and ISPs (Internet Service Providers), you can easily send emails to a large number of people with a high deliverability rate.
Boost engagement rates: Email IP warming helps you build a track record of a positive sending reputation, i.e., it signals the ESPs that your email domain is an active and valued domain that gets regular interactions from its readers.
However, it's important to note that your email domain reputation is not the only determinant of email deliverability.
Which other factors can impact your email deliverability?
Besides your sending reputation, email deliverability depends on these factors:
- Bounce Rate – is the metric that measures the number of emails that didn’t reach the leads’ inbox folders.
- Engagement Rate – measure the number of people who engaged with your emails, like opened, replied, or marked your emails as important.
- Delete Rate – the number of email recipients who deleted your emails from their primary inboxes.
- Unsubscribe Requests – the number of email recipients who opted out of your emails by unsubscribing from your email list.
- Spam Reports – the volume of spam complaints your ESP receives from the email recipients.
- Email Content – the quality of content you are adding to your emails. ESPs check your content quality by scanning your email body, grammar and spelling mistakes, spam words usage, the authority of the attached links, etc.
Blacklist – the IP addresses that are either blocked or redirected to the recipients' spam folders as the ISPs identify them as malicious or spammy.
However, all of these factors don’t carry equal weight in determining your IP health.
For instance, your IP health won’t get much affected if a few people unsubscribe from your email list. But spam reports can greatly impact your email sender's reputation.
Force your cold emails into your prospect’s primary inbox every time. Get started with Omniwarm.
So, how can you warm up your email?
Starting with email IP warming can be confusing. You could have multiple questions like:
- Where do you start?
- How many warmup emails can you send?
- How do you warm up your IP across all ESPs?
- Isn’t email warm-up a time-consuming process?
Let’s go through each one of them one-by-one.
Where do you start with IP warming?
You could start with internal addresses, like personal Gmail accounts, to ensure your emails get delivered right and get responses. This is especially important if you are building a new email domain or trying to fix the deliverability rate of an IP that isn’t getting much engagement rate.
A few of your messages may be in the spam folder. Pull them out and place them into your contacts or safe sender lists. This is why segmenting your email list to start with internal emails first helps you warm up your email better because getting replies helps boost your IP authenticity.
Now, start sending emails to your contact lists, especially those likelier to engage. And then move on to the contacts who have recently engaged with your emails. Getting the correct response rate will help ESPs understand that your domain is legit.
Bonus tip - Keep sorting your contact list
Keep a close eye on people who are engaging with your emails the most and who aren’t at all. For instance, the most recent sign-ups engage the most with your emails, while the older ones may have a lower engagement rate. So, as you scan through your list to re-engage with your old contacts, consider reducing the number of inactive leads from your list as they bring down your overall engagement rates.
How many warmup emails can you send?
Deciding on the email volume you can send to warm up your domain is always a good practice to maintain your domain reputation hygiene.
And the metric you can follow to determine the number of email deliveries is your recipient engagement. The ISPs are harsh to the domains that have low engagement rates. Consider slowing down your warmup emails to evaluate whether you are:
- Sending emails with value
- Writing personalized and persuasive subject lines
- Including a clear first line in your emails
- Using spam words in your email
- Adding a clear call to action in your emails
With a bit of contemplation, you can boost the engagement rates of your warmup emails with your new prospects and reactivate the old leads who haven’t engaged with your emails for a while.
Note – Starting with a low volume of emails and then increasing the number gradually always helps to be in the green and develop a solid sender reputation. Warming up your email takes around 30 days. (Psst! For Omniwarm users, it doesn’t take more than 14 days to warm up their domains).
How do you warm up your emails across all ESPs?
Schedule email warmups for each ESP every day.
For example, you could divide your warmup schedule into 25 Gmail accounts, 25 Outlook accounts, 25 Yahoo! Mail accounts, 25 AOL Mail accounts, etc.
This way, your warmup schedule will be regular, and you will gradually build a good reputation over two weeks. The better you schedule your warmup, the faster your warming-up process will be.
Isn’t email warm-up a time-consuming process?
Even though email warmup is not a tricky process to execute, it can be a lengthy process because:
- You have to keep your email content engaging,
- Maintain a steady rate of email sends,
- Keep the conversations alive,
- Increase your email deliverability rate, and
- Boost your email IP reputation.
Phew! Quite a task, isn’t it?
But the good news is that you don’t have to warm up your domain manually. Several email warmup tools will help you to automate the entire email warmup process.
So, why not use the ultimate email warmup tool in the market – Omniwarm?
How can Omniwarm help you?
Omniwarm is the result of our years of expertise and experience. We have developed Omniwarm to simplify email warmups – it just takes a few minutes to set up your account and start your IP warmup process.
And Omniwarm leverages the members of the Omni community to warm up your IP domain by receiving, responding, and sending conversational emails automatically. Besides, these emails will be filtered into a separate inbox, so you don’t have to pay much attention to them.
But what’s the biggest USP of Omniwarm, you ask?
Omniwarm helps you trick the spam folders into thinking that you are actually great at cold emails, helping you land into the primary inbox every time. With Omniwarm, you get the following:
- Warmup unlimited inboxes,
- Send an optimal number of emails,
- Send the optimal number of responses,
- Get ultimate inbox placement, and
- Send highly customized emails.
Wait, we are not done yet! Omniwarm is completely free for Omnioutreach users because what’s outreach without a proper warmed-up domain?
You just need to set up an Omni account to use Omniwarm, verify your email account, and activate Omniwarm. And voila! You are all set.
Try Omniwarm now for free for 7 days. Land in your prospects’ primary inbox, always, and boost your sales in no time!
