What is Email Domain Warm Up?
Email domain warm-up is gradually increasing the volume of emails sent with a domain rather than starting with high email volumes.
This process helps build a good reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Email Service Providers (ESP).
When you send emails from a new or inactive domain, email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook closely monitor your sending behavior to determine your domain's reputation.
ISPs are tasked with protecting their users from unsolicited spam mail. A new domain is unknown and potentially dangerous to ISPs.
To gain their trust, you need to prove to them that you're not a spammer with email domain warm-up.
Why is Email Domain Warming Important?
Without properly warming up your domain, your emails may be flagged as spam or even blacklisted by email providers.
Here are the main reasons why you should prioritize email domain warm-up:
- Establish trust with email service providers: Gradually increase your email sending volume and engage with your subscribers, signaling to email service providers that you are a legitimate sender instead of spam.
- Improve email deliverability rates: A warmed-up email domain can achieve higher deliverability rates. It ensures that your messages reach your subscribers' inboxes.
- Build a positive sender reputation: Properly warming up your domain leads to a positive sender reputation based on factors such as email engagement and complaint rates, which enhances the likelihood of successful email delivery.
- Avoid spam filters and blacklisting: Without a proper email domain warm-up, your emails can trigger spam filters or be blacklisted by email service providers, which can deteriorate your deliverability and campaign effectiveness.
- Boost engagement and conversion rates: Warming up your domain can lead to higher open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. It can benefit both your marketing efforts and your relationship with email service providers.
How to Warm Up an Email Domain: 10 Best Practices
To warm up your email domain successfully, you need to follow some crucial steps. We gathered the steps you need to take along with tips and tricks.
Consider the following steps while getting started with warming up your email domain.
1. Set Up Your Email Domain
The first step in the email warming process involves setting up your email address with the new or previously dormant domain.
Start by creating the actual email address and configuring it for sending. You can start sending your first emails with the email address set up.
It is vital that your new domain's name aligns with your primary domain's name. If you use a different name, it might not make sense to your subscribers. Keep in mind that using a consistent domain name is important while setting up your email domain.
2. Gradually Increase Email Volume
Warming up an email domain is a gradual process. After you send your first emails, the goal is to increase the number of emails you send out gradually.
It would be best if you didn't jump from 100 to 1000 emails in a day. Such an increase would seem suspicious to ISPs and could affect your sender's reputation.
Also, during this period, it's important to focus on email recipients who frequently engage with your emails. Consistent interaction with your emails, such as opening, click-throughs, and replies, signals ISPs about the relevance of your emails and helps build your sender reputation.
3. Keep Email Sending Limits in Mind
While deciding how many emails to send, you can keep email-sending limits in mind.
Depending on the email service provider you use, these numbers may change.
You need to comply with these limits so as not to be marked as spam while warming up your sending domain.
These limits can change according to pricing plans, so ensure that you use the proper plan for your needs.
Here are some of the email service providers' email-sending limits in 2024:
4. Send Individual Emails Manually
While warming up your email domain, you can start sending individual emails manually. You can send these emails to your friends and family and focus on sending them to your genuine connections.
That way, you can first warm up your email domain manually.
Maintain a consistent tone and voice in your emails, and pay attention to not sending spammy emails, which we will explain later again.
5. Use Email Warm-up Tools
Using email warm-up tools can enhance the process of warming up your email domain.
These tools are designed to automate and optimize various aspects of domain warming, such as gradually increasing sending volume, monitoring engagement metrics, and managing authentication protocols.
Using automated systems and email warm-up tools can enhance your email domain's reputation and deliverability.
By using these tools, you can ensure a smoother and more efficient warm-up process.
These tools often provide valuable insights and analytics that allow you to track your progress and make informed decisions to optimize your domain warming strategy.
Most of the email warm-up tools allow you to adjust sending volume and control daily sending limits. These tools can integrate with various ESPs and provide detailed analytics that make your job much easier.
Instead of manually sending emails and spending a lot of time and energy, you can use these tools to improve efficiency.
Here are a few of the email warm-up tools you can use:
6. Focus on Email Authentication
Email authentication is a crucial aspect of domain warm-up as it helps verify your identity as a legitimate sender and build trust with email service providers.
Here's how you can implement email authentication:
Set Up SPF (Sender Policy Framework):
Define authorized senders with SPF. SPF allows you to specify which IP addresses or domains are authorized to send emails on behalf of your domain.
Create and publish SPF records in your domain's DNS settings to inform email service providers about the authorized sources of your emails.
Enable DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail):
DKIM is a DNS record that works by adding encryption to emails. Generate a unique DKIM that validates the authenticity of your emails. Publish DKIM records in your DNS settings to allow email service providers to verify the integrity of your emails using the generated keys.
Implement DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance):
Define your DMARC policy. Specify how email service providers should handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM authentication checks.
Enable DMARC reporting to receive feedback reports from email service providers about email authentication failures and potential attack attempts.
📌 Important: You need to regularly monitor authentication status. Ensure that SPF and DKIM records are correctly configured and aligned with the domains used in your email campaigns. Analyze DMARC reports to identify any authentication issues or suspicious activity and take appropriate corrective actions.
7. Use Dedicated IP & Improve IP Reputation
Using a shared IP can affect your warm-up activities as well. Consider using a dedicated IP for your email marketing activities.
That way, you can manage your warm-up activities properly, and your reputation can only depend on your own activities.
Sending from a shared IP can have negative effects, so ensure you are using a clean IP address that doesn't involve malicious activities.
Instead, use dedicated IP addresses that are single-use. Once you start using a dedicated IP, you can start improving its reputation with valuable content that doesn't disturb anyone.
Keep in mind that if you trust that the shared IP is not involved in malicious activity, you can keep on using that as well.
8. Avoid Using Spammy Words & Content
Including spammy words and content might lead your emails to go to the spam folder. To avoid that, don't include content that can be evaluated as spammy.
Avoid using excessive punctuation, such as multiple exclamation marks or excessive capitalization.
Minimize the use of elevated sales language and hype-filled phrases, as these can come across as spammy as well.
Avoid spam trigger words such as "free, limited time, urgent, bonus, click here, act now" in your subject lines and overall email body as well.
Instead, personalize your subject lines and make them more relevant and engaging.
Provide valuable and high-quality content in your email, and focus on creating content that resonates with your audience. Offer solutions to their needs and pain points instead of sending promotional content all the time.
Apart from these, avoid adding excessive links that look spammy.
🧐 Also see: Why Do Emails Go to Spam Instead of Inbox & What to Do So They Don't Anymore
9. Test for Spam Filters
Testing for spam filters is a crucial step in ensuring that your emails reach your subscribers' inboxes and avoid being flagged as spam while warming up your inbox.
Use spam filter testing tools that analyze your email content and provide feedback on potential spam triggers. These tools simulate how your emails can be evaluated by spam filters and offer suggestions for improvement.
Invest in email deliverability platforms that offer comprehensive testing features, including spam filter testing.
These platforms provide insights into how your emails perform across different email clients and spam filter systems.
You can conduct A/B testing to test for spam filters. Divide your email list into segments and send variations of your email content with different subject lines and content elements. Monitor each variation's deliverability rates and spam complaint rates to identify any patterns.
Many email marketing platforms provide a spam score for your emails, indicating their likelihood of being flagged as spam. You can elevate your spam score and aim to keep your score as low as possible.
By following best practices for email content and formatting, you can optimize your emails so as not to be considered spam.
10. Keep Your Email Lists Clean
Maintaining clean email lists is essential for maximizing email deliverability. Warming up your email domain can get harder if you don't have a clean email list.
Regularly remove subscribers that are not engaging with your emails. Having inactive subscribers can negatively impact your domain reputation. Remove invalid or outdated email addresses from your list to minimize bounce rates.
Provide subscribers with options to customize their email preferences, such as frequency and content types.
Require subscribers to confirm their email addresses via a double opt-in process to verify their interest.
Divide your email list into segments based on engagement levels, such as active, inactive, and new subscribers, to adjust your email content and sending frequency accordingly.
How to Warm Up an Email Domain Infographic
TL;DR?
Here, we prepared a quick infographic guide for you about how to warm up an email domain!
Mistakes to Avoid While Warming Up Your Email Domain
There are potential mistakes in domain warming that can waste your time and effort if not applied well.
Here are some common mistakes that you should avoid:
- Overloading ISPs with a sudden outburst of emails: While this may seem like a quick way to warm up your domain, it is not efficient. A large volume of emails from a new domain or IP address can raise red flags with ISPs.
- Ignoring feedback loops: ISPs provide feedback loops that can give you insights into how your emails are being perceived and handled. You are missing a lot if you're not monitoring these feedback loops or ignoring the feedback given.
- Not cleaning email list: This can include not consistently removing bouncing email addresses or not validating your email list before sending emails. If your emails are frequently bouncing back, this can affect your sender's reputation.
- Ignoring metrics: While sending out emails, monitoring whether they are being opened and clicked is critical. Low open rates, click-through rates, and high spam complaints signal poor engagement. Ignoring these engagement metrics is a common mistake you shouldn't make.
- Inconsistency in sending emails: If you send emails inconsistently, ISPs might view your domain as dormant again, and you'd have to start the warming process from scratch. To avoid this, adhere to a regular sending schedule.
Wrap Up
There's no doubt that a proper email domain warm-up is vital in email marketing.
By gradually increasing your email-sending volume, avoiding common mistakes, and maintaining good email-sending practices, your emails can have a higher chance of reaching the inbox instead of a spam box.
Using the tips and strategies in this blog post, you can start warming up your sending domain and reach your target audience properly. 🤓
Frequently Asked Questions
What Impacts Domain Reputation?
Several factors can influence your email domain's reputation. Email engagement, spam complaints, and bounce rates can affect your domain's reputation. Additionally, consistency in sending emails, authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and content quality can impact domain reputation.
Do You Have to Warm Up An Email Domain?
If you don't want your emails to land in spam folders, you must warm up your email domain. Email domain warming is essential to establish trust with email service providers, improve deliverability rates, build a positive sender reputation, avoid spam filters and blacklisting, and increase engagement and conversion rates.
How Long Does It Take to Warm Up An Email Domain?
How long it takes to warm up an email domain can vary depending on your sending volume, engagement rates, and domain reputation.
Usually, it's recommended to gradually increase your sending volume over several weeks to several months.
When You Can Stop Warming Up Your Email Domain?
Knowing when to stop warming your email domain is crucial for optimal deliverability and engagement rates.
Once you observe consistent high deliverability, stable engagement metrics, and a positive sender reputation, it may indicate that your warm-up efforts have been successful.
However, it's essential to continue monitoring your email performance to ensure continued success in your email marketing efforts.
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