Successful email deliverability can seem like a tricky task. With so many factors affecting your sender's reputation, such as content quality and subscriber list health, getting your email to the right inbox can feel harder than ever.
In this article, you'll learn how to warm up with Omnisend to reach better email deliverability rates for your newsletters.
Contents
Before you start
The warmup is a process of gradually increasing send volumes over a number of days or weeks. Note that it could take longer if receivers do not perceive your email as an opt-in. Warming up slowly builds up your sender's reputation and improves email deliverability.
When switching from one email marketing platform to another, the server used for sending your emails will also change. Your new email servers are not allowed to send large numbers of emails in one go, so to ensure your emails get delivered to the right inboxes, sending volumes should be increased over time. The warmup process plays a significant part in email deliverability; skipping it can result in many emails not being delivered.
While the warmup plan will work for most users, many factors can influence the process. For example, if ISPs' scripts determine that the quality of generated traffic is below their expectations, part of your emails might get blocked or sent to junk folders. Moreover, if you are migrating from one service provider to another, be prepared for a few little bumps in your metrics. Large ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft may need a little more time to adjust their metrics. These ISPs update their records based on current and previous interactions with your mail or domain.
Warmup process
You can start implementing your warmup plan by navigating to Reports → Deliverability → Open warmup plan → Get started.
If we notice your store is not ready for the Warmup, we'll give you tips on the changes that should be applied before starting the Warmup. Switching to your domain before the warmup is essential to ensure you'll build your brand's sender's reputation for the future.
There are a few essential things to remember:
You can start the warmup process only if you have about 20k subscribers in your Omnisend audience;
Once the Warmup process has started, you can send 1 campaign per day. You can send campaigns every day;
Each Omnisend store gets a unique warmup plan based on the subscriber count. The number of steps will be calculated automatically and can vary from 3 up to 25;
Emails from your enabled automations are not included in the daily limit count, so they will be sent as usual;
Segments for warmup campaigns are prepared automatically. The segments are based on subscription date (new subscribers first) for now;
Before starting the warm-up plan, you can decide to exclude certain segments from the plan if you have separate segments that you would rather not send an email to during the warm-up phase. Just select the segment you'd like to exclude in Settings → click Exclude.
Сontacts overlapping:
Be aware that each campaign has to be a newly crafted email as you move on to the next step daily. This should be done to ensure your subscribers don't get the same email a few times. At the later steps of the warmup process, the subscribers will be combined, so the segments will include customers who have received your warmup emails before. At some point in your warmup plan, you may notice that contacts in warmup segments will start overlapping, meaning you should send different content in most cases.
Once Warmup has started, you won't be able to send to All contacts or another segment under Campaigns → Recipients. The Warmup segment will be selected automatically for your campaign;
The daily limit is being updated at 00:00 UTC; you will see a banner about how much time is left when sending a campaign; This banner will also show the progress of your warmup process (how many warmup steps are completed);
In the Reports → Deliverability, you will be able to see the steps of the warmup process with the timeline, view the subscriber list for the current step, and view the report for the completed steps. If you wish to stop the Warmup → click Stop Sender Warmup at the top right corner, this can be done anytime.
It's important to remember that the warmup process is vital for maintaining a good email marketing strategy. When you have a good reputation, you get more credibility, email clients put your emails in the primary inbox, and your customers open your email more often.
Benefits of warmup
Warming up your reputation provides a unique opportunity to monitor and optimize your entire email campaign. Using our segmentation recommendations, you'll be able to find out your most engaged audiences and adjust your campaigns to get more benefits. The excellent reputation you build during the warmup period will make your life much easier - instead of chasing problems, you will have time to focus on your business.
During warmup, ISPs will evaluate your sending behavior, content, and recipient engagement to see how well you manage your lists' health and how willing you are to send relevant information to responsive users. It is also a perfect time to reassess your content - identify which emails generate the most (or least) engagement and find out why. Disengaged subscribers cause complaints, spam traps, and hard bounces, which can also affect deliverability/inbox placement to your engaged subscribers. You can expect a lower ROI when including disengaged subscribers in your campaigns. If the message you send is never opened - that cost is wasted!
Keep in mind:
If people do not want your mail, your reputation suffers;
Opt-ins are a must;
ISPs trust the metrics of their users. No brand will get special treatment over another;
The reputation of your own signed domain can follow you; however, ISPs like Gmail use the domain's reputation combined with the IP's reputation. Follow the warmup process to ensure a good sender reputation!
And remember, if a subscriber is with you for many years, it does not mean they are engaged with the content you send. Recently opted-in subscribers are the ones most interested in your content!
FAQ
Why does my warmup campaign have no stats?
The warmup segment that was used for this campaign was deleted after the warmup plan was completed. Our warmup segments are designed to be used only once, and they're automatically deleted as soon as the plan is finished. Once the segment is deleted, any campaigns that were sent to that segment will not have any stats because the segment is no longer available to track.
