In a world that heavily relies on email, you undoubtedly recognize the immense impact of optimized email deliverability to fuel your ongoing growth and successfully promote your products or services.
One vital practice that many users are turning to is email warmup, a process that involves gradually sending more and more emails from a new email account to establish a positive reputation with email providers and bypass spam filters.
In this blog, we will explore the world of automated email warmup services, taking you through the basics, exploring their pros and cons, and ultimately, answering the question: Is it safe to use an automated email warmup service?
What Is Email Warm-Up?
Email warm-up is the practice of gradually increasing the number of emails sent from a new email account. The purpose is to build a positive reputation with the email providers and avoid spam filters, which detect unsolicited and virus-infected emails.
You may ask, “Why bother warming up your email account or IP address if you can just start sending out emails?”
Well, ISPs are not fond of users who abruptly start sending large volumes of emails, particularly from newly created accounts. They can easily identify you as a new sender rather than an established one.
In such cases, your emails may end up in the recipient’s spam folders. However, by completing an email warmup process, you can minimize the likelihood of facing deliverability issues.
Related: How to Improve and Maintain Your Email Deliverability
The Email Warm-Up Process
The email warm-up process typically involves steadily increasing the sending volume in a deliberate and controlled manner while ensuring that the email domain receives positive user interactions.
Positive interactions tell mailbox providers that people are interested and want to engage with your content. These include actions, including replies, marking emails as necessary, and getting an email moved from the spam inbox to the primary inbox.
Getting these positive interactions on a daily basis may be challenging but you can achieve it by following this email warm-up process:
– The day-on-day increase of email volume for one inbox should be higher than 100%.
– The sending volume should gradually increase randomly, not a set of percentages, so your growth looks more natural.
– You send emails to engaged subscribers first who have clicked on or opened previous emails.
– Varying the format and content of emails to avoid being flagged as spam.
– Monitor the delivery rates, and if your emails are marked as spam or bounce, slow down your sending for that particular email list.
– Use your email warm-up tool if you prefer to automate the process.
What is an Automated Email Warm-Up Service?
Source: Canva/ Karolina Grabowska
An automated email warmup service is a system-driven approach that steadily increases the daily sending volume of emails over a specific period. By automatically sending warm-up emails that gradually raise the user’s sending capacity, this service aims to improve the user’s overall email deliverability. The process helps establish the user as a reliable sender, ensuring their emails successfully reach the intended recipients.
In many cases, the warmup service connects your email account with hundreds or thousands of other customers to send and receive emails. The goal is to warm up your domain through the help of these other user email accounts and gradually increase the email volume you send, mimicking natural growth.
So, Is It Safe to Use an Automated Email Warmup Service?
Yes and no.
Different types of email warm-up services are available nowadays, and some have proven features that improve their users’ deliverability.
As with any service you bring in, beyond being effective at solving the problem it is designed to solve, it is essential to ensure that the provider maintains the necessary security measures to protect your account and data. Before opting for an automated email warmup service, it is imperative to research and assess various providers based on their reviews, security certifications, and industry reputation to ensure a safe and effective email warmup experience.
We have compiled pros and cons to help you decide whether to use an email warmup service for your business.
Benefits of Using an Automated Email Warm-Up Service
Source: Canva/ Andrea Piacquadio
It builds or repairs the sender’s reputation
A good email warmup tool helps build a positive sender reputation, which ESPs, like Gmail and Outlook, check before allowing emails through.
When you first create an email account, its reputation is neutral. Every action you and your email recipients take from then on will be evaluated to rate your reputation.
User actions that look like normal daily activities for an email user, including receiving and sending a handful of emails) help build a positive reputation.
An email warm-up tool helps you build that positive reputation, whether repairing a damaged reputation or starting from a neutral one.
It scales your outreach faster
By using an automated email warm-up service, it starts sending cold emails gradually every few days. This process lessens the time it takes to build your reputation, and you can scale your outreach faster.
It saves you time
Since an email warmup tool runs on autopilot and the process is handled externally, you can spend more time closing more sales or preparing your cold email campaigns.
Improved email deliverability
Warmed-up email creates a positive reputation for your email domain, improving your email deliverability. This likewise lessens the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.
Avoid blacklisting
When you manually send hundreds of emails left and right, you may get flagged as a spammer and blacklisted by ESPs. An automated email warmup tool helps you avoid unfortunate events in your campaign or business.
Related: Blacklisted Email – Mistakes Happen: How to Get Off of Email Blacklists
Better email engagement
You gradually introduce your campaigns to your subscribers using an automated email warmup service, building trust. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and higher engagement rates.
And think about it, the more emails that land in the inboxes, the higher your email open rate and the better your engagement will be.
Cost savings
If your emails land in the spam folder, you’re throwing money down the drain. But by using an automated email warmup service, you can ensure that your emails land in the inboxes of your intended audience.
Ultimately, an email warm-up is essential in any sales or email marketing campaign, and the opportunity of doing it on autopilot should not be overlooked.
Provides time for A/B testing
Using an auto-warmer, you can test different subject lines and content and send times before you launch your campaign on full scale to see what resonates best with your target audience.
So, when you launch your full-scale email marketing campaign, it will have a higher chance of landing in the inbox, and you can optimize your approach to increasing engagement rates.
Now that we’ve defined what email warmup and an automated email warm-up service is and the benefits of using one, we’ll now look at some of its cons.
Disadvantages of Using an Automated Email Warm-up Service
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Ineffective for many
Although these email service providers pool your email with others, Google and Outlook can detect that your account is being manipulated by automation.
While it may work well enough for small amounts of email, larger volumes are less effective due to inbox providers recognizing common usage patterns. Plus, you have limited control over the warm-up process itself.
Reduced functionality with ESPs
Do you use an Email Service Provider (ESP) like MailChimp, Klaviyo, or SendinBlue? Most warmup services aren’t compatible with these platforms.
And, even the ones that do work with ESPs don’t send emails the same way you usually would, either through SMTP or an API, which means the warmup results might not translate to “real” sends.
Public visibility of your email content
When connecting with an email warm-up service, you’re potentially letting your competitors or other customers see your emails and the content you’re sending. They can check this by looking at their “sent emails” folder to see who their emails have been sent to.
Or they can also look at their inbox or archived emails and spot your content within.
Security issues
Warm-up services require full access to your email account. This means you’re sharing access to all the emails you have ever sent and all the emails you have received. This includes your customer list, sensitive information, and personal data.
While you may trust the company, can you be confident that none of their employees or contractors will conduct unauthorized activities or misuse your data?
Lowered deliverability due to spammers
Spammers on the same network as you can lessen the effectiveness of these services or even negatively affect email deliverability. Inbox providers can detect when multiple emails with the same template or content are warming up, flagging it as potential spam.
As a result, using a shared warm-up service can inadvertently harm your email campaign and deliverability, or at the very least blunt the effects.
Easily detectable non-human activity
While engaging with actual, human-owned email addresses is ideal, robotic engagement through APIs or automation can be easily detected, rendering the service less effective. Moreover, your email account may be temporarily disabled if it is frequently accessed from various locations or machines.
These services also don’t simulate a natural sending pattern over many hours, allowing inbox providers to identify the automated nature of emails.
Cluttered inbox
Due to the service sending emails back and forth among multiple customers, your inbox may become cluttered with random messages and replies that are difficult to distinguish from genuine correspondence.
Although some services allow you to include a code for filtering purposes, using a code can also be used as a trackable fingerprint for inbox providers to detect.
Simulates only cold emailer behavior
Many warmup services cannot replicate the actions of typical senders who send hundreds of emails daily to an opt-in list with minor changes in membership. This is because most of these services are built in a way that sends to a user base that frequently changes.
The Verdict
Utilizing an automated email warm-up service is undoubtedly an appealing choice for individuals and businesses looking to fast-track the enhancement of their sender reputation and email deliverability. In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, accelerating the process is not only desirable but often essential to ensure effective communication with customers, clients, and partners. However, while it is tempting to embrace these services, it is of paramount importance to select the right trusted partner that can cater to your unique requirements.
The right email warm-up service should have a proven track record of success, offering high-quality features, robust security measures, and unparalleled customer support. Partnering with a reliable provider ensures that an optimized and effective sender reputation is consistently maintained, resulting in higher deliverability rates and ultimately expanding your reach. Moreover, by working with a reputable service provider, you also gain peace of mind knowing that your email campaigns will be handled with utmost care, diligence, and professionalism, minimizing any unfavorable consequences or setbacks that may arise from less reliable solutions.
Why InboxAlly?
Consider using InboxAlly, the ultimate deliverability tool as an email warm-up solution for a more trustworthy and reliable approach to improving your email deliverability.
Unlike other tools, InboxAlly ensures your email content remains private. It also avoids many pitfalls associated with other automated email warm-up services.
Some interesting features of InboxAlly to help super-charge your email marketing efforts include:
- Repair/ increase deliverability on any domain/ IP on any platform
- Use your own content in the emails sent on autopilot
- Broadcast Auto-detect feature, which senses your sending
- Track your progress on the dashboard
- Set your own sending schedule
- It can be used with a large-sized list
Start Landing in More Inboxes
Source: Canva/ alexsl
When used effectively, an email warmup can be an excellent strategy to improve deliverability and maximize email engagement. And by relying on the right email warm-up tool, the process runs on autopilot.
Still, an unguided entry into the world of automated email warm-up comes with disadvantages.
The bottom line, therefore, is to weigh the pros and cons carefully. If you choose to automate your email warm-up process, select a tool that you trust to effectively manage this crucial process of getting your emails to the inbox and having the full impact they deserve.
With InboxAlly, you can establish a positive sender reputation using its email warm-up feature. It also offers a centralized platform for managing multiple clients and campaigns. Find out more about this ultimate deliverability tool here.