How to warm up your email account
Have you ever tried to cook an egg in a cold pan? It doesn’t turn out well! The same goes for your email marketing campaigns. If you don’t warm up your email account before launching a big campaign, you’re bound to fail.
But don’t worry, now we’ll show you how to warm up your email account so that it has a better reputation and «Email Deliverability», so your emails reach your recipients.
So, grab your pan and let’s cook up some successful emails.
The process of warming up is actually very simple.
You start by sending emails from a new account (which has no reputation yet, i.e. in a “cold” state) to a small number of people and gradually increase each day.
As you can see, the process in general terms is very simple. Nevertheless, now we will take a closer look at it step by step so as not to miss any important details.
Basically, warming up your email account means gaining the trust of email service providers – the main intermediary between your leads and you.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to seduce them with flowers and chocolates, you just have to warm up your email account. This way, you will achieve:
- Avoid being included in blacklists and avoid being classified as spam.
- Increase your delivery rate and open rates.
- Prepare your account to send a high volume of messages. By gradually increasing the number of emails, you will build a better reputation as a sender.
Get started with account customization
This may seem like a minor detail, but it’s important that you add a profile picture and email signature to make yourself look like a real person.
Do not rush to send emails to people you do not know
Collect a list of email addresses that you know will reply to you.
These can be from your friends, family, partners…
There is no need to send them marketing content that you have prepared for your leads. You can say hello to them, write a friendly personal message or send them any content that you find interesting.
Then ask them to do you a small favor: reply to your message and click on the link if there is one.
And this, for what purpose?
By having email conversations, you will be improving your reputation and credibility. Mail providers will be able to see that you are a real person having authentic interactions with real accounts.
🌠Tip: It is recommended to do the same with about 15 or 20 accounts that you already know. The longer the conversations the better. An optimal number would be around 10 emails exchanged (5 from you and 5 responses from the other person).
In summary, it is important to show some activity, and that there is a real person behind that email address.
Esto lo puedes hacer tú mismo porque es muy sencillo y lleva poco tiempo. However, there are tools that automate the entire warming up process and do this job for you.
*Hack: Travel agencies always reply, so you can search for travel agencies and automate a cold email campaign.
Subscribe to newsletters📥
This is very good practice because it helps you prove to mailers that your account is active and running.
When you create an email account it’s not just for sending, you also have to receive something from time to time, right?
As a general rule, you can subscribe to about 10 newsletters, so you make sure you receive regular emails.
How long should this process take?
In general, you should warm it up it for at least a week.
But if you’re going to be emailing a very large number of people on a daily basis, you may need more time to achieve optimal results. A phase of between 4 and 6 weeks is recommended.
What is clear is that the more time you dedicate to improving your reputation, the more email providers will trust you.
Little by little, gradually
Your mantra should be “Slow and steady wins the race.”
When you start to send emails to your leads, do not send many emails in a very short time. It’s a bad idea to send hundreds of emails automatically in just a couple of days.
This could cause email providers to start seeing you as a spammer. Send emails frequently yes, but keep time intervals.
The increase in emails sent should be gradual. For example, if we send 10,000 mass emails, it would be a mistake to send only 20 the following month.
What can you do to avoid falling into the spam folder?
We have already discussed how to warm up your email account. Now, let’s take a look at the 8 commandments📜 to ensure that your emails don’t end up in spam.
Authenticate your domain
Do you know what SPF is? Perfect, I didn’t know either.
The SPF is a value that is in the DNS configuration of the domain that serves to indicate who can send emails on your behalf. That is, what services can send emails with your domain.
For example, if you have Google Workspace, you need to have an SPF configured on the domain that indicates that Google can send email on your behalf.
Or if you sign up for an autoresponder, you should set up that autoresponder to send emails on your behalf. When I say “on your behalf”, I mean your domain name (eg: mailerfind.com).
Normally if you use platforms that are specifically dedicated to sending emails, it is configured automatically. We can help you through our support if you have any problems.
The SPF record looks something like this:
You can learn how to authenticate your domain in this most complete guide📋.
Clean up your email lists
It’s important to do a cleanup from time to time to avoid sending emails to invalid addresses, which could increase your bounce rate (delivery failures) and, consequently, cause a decrease in your reputation.
In this article, we explain step by step how you can clean your email marketing list.
Get Removed from Blacklists
If you see that you have been listed on a blacklist, try to get out of them. You check it, for example, on Mxtoolbox (selecting Blacklist Check in the search bar) or on Mail-tester.
Usually, they allow you to make a request on their website to be removed from the blacklist. Write a message that you are a good citizen and promise not to send spam✋🏻.
Take care of the content of your emails
Avoid using spam trigger words
Do not overuse highly commercial words or expressions that trigger spam filters, such as: free, 50% off, buy now, great sale, etc.
Stick to the optimal text-image ratio
Spammers love images because it’s a great way to hide spam trigger words from filters.
That’s why excessive use of images can attract the attention of spam filters.
The best text-image ratio is 80-20.
Be careful with attachments
Email deliverability is greatly affected by the size of the email. Experiments show that the larger the email, the more often mailers filter it as spam.
The solution is easy:
Instead of sending the file as an attachment with the email, include links to Google Drive files (which, by the way, are automatically scanned for viruses and are trusted by both email providers and recipients).
Of course, it is VERY important to add the right and necessary links. Don’t fill your emails with links 🔗.
Avoid multiple colors, fonts, and all-caps text
An overabundance of colors, fonts, and all-caps text can arouse suspicion.
In this case, it’s better to skip the fancy designs. Create a natural and organic email that looks like it was sent to you by a friend. Write like a human and add personality.
Provide explicit options for unsubscribing.
In this life everything comes and goes… And believe it or not, letting them unsubscribe from your emails is much better than crying later about a poor delivery rate of your emails.
It is preferable that they unsubscribe from your list than that they mark your address as spam because they do not want to receive your emails anymore, which would mean a decrease in your reputation (and that’s the last thing we want).
Check the spam score
Before sending anything, check the score you receive from scoring systems. For example, to measure the spam score of my emails before sending them, I use a tool called Mail-tester.com. It’s free and you don’t need to create an account.
If you don’t want to have any problems, make sure the score is above 80. I get a 90 or more on all my emails✅.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve reached the end of this article, remember:
All it takes is a little patience and planning to make your campaign sizzle! When you’re ready to send your next wave of emails, don’t rush it and make sure to warm up your account beforehand.
This will help you deliver your emails to as many prospects as possible.
But also remember that, at the end of the day, it’s not enough to just reach your recipients, it’s also important that the content of these emails is relevant to them and speaks to their hearts.
So in the next lesson, we’ll see how to write effective emails that will help you attract a legion of new customers.
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