Email Warm Up Is Not Dead.
Here’s Why.
If you’ve been spending time on LinkedIn or learning about email deliverability recently, you might’ve heard this phrase:
“Email warm up is dead”
Is this pessimistic take on email warm up accurate?
Well, yes and no.
It’s a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance, but our team is here to help guide you through it.
In this article, we’ll go over what email warm up is, why people are arguing about whether it’s over, what it means for current warm up tools, and why ours is different.
Let’s start!
“Email warm up is dead”
Is this pessimistic take on email warm up accurate?
Well, yes and no.
It’s a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance, but our team is here to help guide you through it.
In this article, we’ll go over what email warm up is, why people are arguing about whether it’s over, what it means for current warm up tools, and why ours is different.
Let’s start!
What Is Email Warm Up?
Email warm up is a process inboxes go through to gradually gain the trust of Email Service Providers or ESPs.
In order to protect their users from spammers and malware, ESPs use powerful algorithms to detect spam. Colloquially referred to as spam filters, they scan incoming emails for any suspicious content such as spam words, compare your domain to blacklisted email addresses, and check for a lack of authentication.
Failing any of these checks will send your email straight to spam, meaning your prospect never even reads your carefully crafted sales copy.
And a big red flag for these filters?
Low engagement with your address, meaning, sending out mass emails without receiving responses, is suspicious and very similar to what spammers do. As a salesperson or marketer, this is not your fault, especially as you’re first starting out.
You need to figure out your correct audience and you’re A/B testing your email copy. So, how do you prep your email to avoid being marked for spam when you first start your cold emailing campaigns?
By warming it up.
You need to create conversations that signal to ESPs that your email is not simply sending out emails without receiving responses. You can do this manually, by reaching out to colleagues or friends from other companies or departments that you know. This is slow-going but it will be extremely helpful.
Also, keeping a close eye on your lead lists and making your copy as hyper-personalized and specific as possible will help. After all, the better your copy and the more specified your ICP, the more likely you are to receive a response.
Also, you want to start slow and build your way to mass sending. Start at 30 emails per day, go to 50 after a few weeks, and then keep increasing slowly to what your domain is able to accept. Some max out at 1000 emails per day or less.
But this may take some time as well.
The short-cut?
Utilizing an email warm up tool to send automated emails, which then are replied to and increase interaction over time to artificially warm up your domain. By utilizing a tool, the warm up period is significantly shortened from months to weeks.
This means you can start mass-sending a lot faster.
And in sales, time is money.
Email warm up tools saw great growth and popularity in the past few years, especially for the help they provided with email deliverability.
In the last few weeks, however, some massive changes have rocked many of these developers.
In order to protect their users from spammers and malware, ESPs use powerful algorithms to detect spam. Colloquially referred to as spam filters, they scan incoming emails for any suspicious content such as spam words, compare your domain to blacklisted email addresses, and check for a lack of authentication.
Failing any of these checks will send your email straight to spam, meaning your prospect never even reads your carefully crafted sales copy.
And a big red flag for these filters?
Low engagement with your address, meaning, sending out mass emails without receiving responses, is suspicious and very similar to what spammers do. As a salesperson or marketer, this is not your fault, especially as you’re first starting out.
You need to figure out your correct audience and you’re A/B testing your email copy. So, how do you prep your email to avoid being marked for spam when you first start your cold emailing campaigns?
By warming it up.
You need to create conversations that signal to ESPs that your email is not simply sending out emails without receiving responses. You can do this manually, by reaching out to colleagues or friends from other companies or departments that you know. This is slow-going but it will be extremely helpful.
Also, keeping a close eye on your lead lists and making your copy as hyper-personalized and specific as possible will help. After all, the better your copy and the more specified your ICP, the more likely you are to receive a response.
Also, you want to start slow and build your way to mass sending. Start at 30 emails per day, go to 50 after a few weeks, and then keep increasing slowly to what your domain is able to accept. Some max out at 1000 emails per day or less.
But this may take some time as well.
The short-cut?
Utilizing an email warm up tool to send automated emails, which then are replied to and increase interaction over time to artificially warm up your domain. By utilizing a tool, the warm up period is significantly shortened from months to weeks.
This means you can start mass-sending a lot faster.
And in sales, time is money.
Email warm up tools saw great growth and popularity in the past few years, especially for the help they provided with email deliverability.
In the last few weeks, however, some massive changes have rocked many of these developers.
Latest Google Changes
Google demanded that all warm up services cease to work as they do by February 13th, 2023:
If services failed to do this, they lost access to Google and Gmail’s API (Application Programming Interfaces). Essentially, they lost access to their Google Workspace and the possibility to do business with Google.
The mindset here is that it goes against internal Google policies to utilize their API in this way, so they are wanting to crack down on such services. Instead, Google now directly offers DKIM, SPF, and DMARC set-ups for its users, and they suggest focusing on that instead.
After all, top-quality copy and specific customization of prospects should get most salespeople over the mountain.
But there are, of course, a lot of developers affected by this.
The mindset here is that it goes against internal Google policies to utilize their API in this way, so they are wanting to crack down on such services. Instead, Google now directly offers DKIM, SPF, and DMARC set-ups for its users, and they suggest focusing on that instead.
After all, top-quality copy and specific customization of prospects should get most salespeople over the mountain.
But there are, of course, a lot of developers affected by this.
What Does That Mean For Most Email Warm Up Tools?
Because so many warm up tools and services were made relying on API, warm up tools and additions to outreach tools are currently being shut down throughout the space.
With Google and Gmail owning 30% market share of business and personal emails, no one wants to step on their toes by relying on their API for their email warm up tool.
Better to simply shut down what is sometimes regarded as a cumbersome additional service by outreach tools.
What about email warm up tools exclusively?
Decisions have been made in the past few weeks about their future, hence the posts about “email warm up is dead” mentioned at the beginning.
Of course, none of this is helpful for salespeople or marketers that make use of these tools or services to help them crack the code of email deliverability.
While there are manual steps you can take to fix or warm up your new or older email address or domain, there are still issues: how long it takes to warm up successfully or how to dig yourself out of the spam box.
Solutions to such problems now carry a huge question mark.
These tools did serve a purpose for those in the cold or mass emailing game.
Services such as GlockApps or our own SPF/DKIM Checker help you identify and diagnose the issue. But the solution?
That takes more time and a lot of trial and error.
Email warm up tools helped users halve this time from the very beginning, and served a very specific purpose in the world of cold email.
But, with the new regulations, unless they comply with Google’s requirements, their business will essentially disappear.
So what can be done?
Utilize a tool built with an alternative.
With Google and Gmail owning 30% market share of business and personal emails, no one wants to step on their toes by relying on their API for their email warm up tool.
Better to simply shut down what is sometimes regarded as a cumbersome additional service by outreach tools.
What about email warm up tools exclusively?
Decisions have been made in the past few weeks about their future, hence the posts about “email warm up is dead” mentioned at the beginning.
Of course, none of this is helpful for salespeople or marketers that make use of these tools or services to help them crack the code of email deliverability.
While there are manual steps you can take to fix or warm up your new or older email address or domain, there are still issues: how long it takes to warm up successfully or how to dig yourself out of the spam box.
Solutions to such problems now carry a huge question mark.
These tools did serve a purpose for those in the cold or mass emailing game.
Services such as GlockApps or our own SPF/DKIM Checker help you identify and diagnose the issue. But the solution?
That takes more time and a lot of trial and error.
Email warm up tools helped users halve this time from the very beginning, and served a very specific purpose in the world of cold email.
But, with the new regulations, unless they comply with Google’s requirements, their business will essentially disappear.
So what can be done?
Utilize a tool built with an alternative.
Warm Is Being Built With IMAP
At Warm, we’ve been creating our warm up tool for a while.
Our development is taking its time because of all the additions and questions we want to make sure we account for.
It is being built by salespeople and marketers, all of whom have experience with the difficulty of navigating email deliverability. As such, we want to make sure we address all the frustrations we’ve come across ourselves with warm up and deliverability services.
From the very beginning, we’ve built our tool using IMAP, which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.
This protocol allows users to download messages from an ESP’s servers to their computers. At its base, it's the protocol that allows users to access email messages via the Internet regardless of IP location, in multiple devices, and, in some cases, edit without Internet access.
We decided to focus on IMAP as it covered more of the needs that we had to warm up as salespeople and marketers. And because it avoided reliance on the Gmail API.
This decision has now paid off, as long-term our warm up tool will still be able to be used by users.
But at Warm we also offer an email deliverability service, which adds another layer of aid for our users.
Access to all the knowledge we have with email deliverability, which comes from years and years of experience in the world of cold email at the fingertips of our customers.
As we focused so heavily on sales, marketing, and cold email, our team is uniquely positioned and knowledgeable in the subject. We are not salespeople who have come across the idea of email deliverability recently – we have been aware for years.
Our users will be able to make use of this service, the tool, or both. It is entirely up to them!
Access to our blog for further knowledge and the SPF/DKIM Checker will remain accessible to all.
Our development is taking its time because of all the additions and questions we want to make sure we account for.
It is being built by salespeople and marketers, all of whom have experience with the difficulty of navigating email deliverability. As such, we want to make sure we address all the frustrations we’ve come across ourselves with warm up and deliverability services.
From the very beginning, we’ve built our tool using IMAP, which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.
This protocol allows users to download messages from an ESP’s servers to their computers. At its base, it's the protocol that allows users to access email messages via the Internet regardless of IP location, in multiple devices, and, in some cases, edit without Internet access.
We decided to focus on IMAP as it covered more of the needs that we had to warm up as salespeople and marketers. And because it avoided reliance on the Gmail API.
This decision has now paid off, as long-term our warm up tool will still be able to be used by users.
But at Warm we also offer an email deliverability service, which adds another layer of aid for our users.
Access to all the knowledge we have with email deliverability, which comes from years and years of experience in the world of cold email at the fingertips of our customers.
As we focused so heavily on sales, marketing, and cold email, our team is uniquely positioned and knowledgeable in the subject. We are not salespeople who have come across the idea of email deliverability recently – we have been aware for years.
Our users will be able to make use of this service, the tool, or both. It is entirely up to them!
Access to our blog for further knowledge and the SPF/DKIM Checker will remain accessible to all.
Conclusion
Email warm up is not dead, and thinking otherwise would be a big mistake.
As the space becomes more regulated, so too will the tools that are used. And this is okay.
But with the advent of new technologies that respond to these regulations, it is possible to continue your business as usual.
So don’t be scared – be smart.
Sign up for our newsletter and launch list so that you can stay up to date with us!
Don’t want to lose out on a new tool to make your business run smoothly and efficiently.
As the space becomes more regulated, so too will the tools that are used. And this is okay.
But with the advent of new technologies that respond to these regulations, it is possible to continue your business as usual.
So don’t be scared – be smart.
Sign up for our newsletter and launch list so that you can stay up to date with us!
Don’t want to lose out on a new tool to make your business run smoothly and efficiently.
