How long does it really take to warm up an email?

Nobody wants their emails to land in the spam folder.

That's why smart people sharpen their axes and follow email outreach's best practices to dodge this undesirable fate.

One such best practice is email warm-up.

When people hear the term email warm-up, they often associate it with a long and arduous process. 

But how long does it really take? And how much work is involved?

We’ll explain everything below. ⬇️ 

What is email warm-up?

Let’s take a step back and create some clarity first.

No, email warm-up isn't some mystical ritual involving burning incense and chanting ancient email mantras.

Instead:

• ➡️ Email warm-up is slowly increasing sending volume and frequency to establish a sender reputation
• ➡️ With a new sender domain (or one with a bad reputation), you'll want to start sending emails al suave, meaning you initially send very few emails but increase the number of emails sent every week
• ➡️ An important, often overlooked aspect of email warm-up is engagement. It’s not just about increasing sending volume and frequency. At least as essential is that your warm-up emails are getting opens and replies.This engagement signals to internet service providers that your emails are worthwhile and not just some random spam.

So, the not-so-secret recipe for email warm-up is to slowly increase volume and frequency while also getting engagement for your warm-up emails.

Do that, and you can’t help but obtain a stable sender reputation.

How long does email warm-up take? ⌛

You can warm up a single email address in 3-4 weeks.

Typically, you’d use a warm-up service to warm up your email, as doing it manually is a lot of work.

The cool thing about a warm-up service is that, once set up, it works on autopilot. Just connect your email address to the service, turn on warm-up, and return to working on more important tasks, like creating campaigns.

A rookie mistake many people make is turning off the email warm-up process after the initial warm-up phase. When doing outreach, email warm-up should always be kept on to maintain good deliverability.

Why?

When doing email outreach, the engagement you get on your email can be low. For your sender reputation’s sake, you need the engagement you get on your warm-up emails to balance everything out.

Let your email warm-up service work tirelessly behind the scenes to protect your sender reputation.

Factors that influence how long email warm-up takes

• ➡️ Domain age: As a general rule, an email address from a new domain will take longer to warm up than an email address from an older domain, unless…
• ➡️ Domain reputation: If your domain has a bad reputation, it will take longer to warm up the domain and any email addresses associated with it.
• ➡️ Engagement: You will warm up your email faster by getting more engagement for your emails. Note: The engagement levels must be natural. It’s not normal to get a reply for every email you send, especially not for a new email address. So, make sure your engagement pattern looks natural.
• ➡️ Best practices: Use a warm-up tool that follows email warm-up’s best practices. If you stray from a proven warm-up pattern, you risk prolonging the warm-up process.

How much work is involved in email warm-up? 👷🏻

Brace yourself.

Warming up your email is…. 

Exceptionally easy!

That is: with a deliverability booster like lemwarm. 

Warming up your email manually is a heck of a job, but with lemwarm:

1. You connect your email account to lemwarm
2. You adjust the warm-up settings
3. And you activate the warm-up process

And you’re good to go!

We recommend you also activate the Smart Cluster, which lets you tailor your email warm-up to your industry, audience, and email goals.

Monitoring the warm-up process 🕵🏻

Any decent warm-up tool lets you know where your emails are landing. This helps you determine if your warm-up strategy is working.

This is what looks like in lemwarm:

If too many of your warm-up emails land in spam, it may be time to try a different warm-up strategy.

But the deliverability monitoring doesn’t stop there:

Another benefit of a good email deliverability tool is that it keeps tabs on your deliverability.

lemwarm, for example, alerts you when deliverability issues arise, meaning you can have peace of mind regarding your deliverability.

All these features allow you to warm up your email faster by catching deliverability issues before they grow into full-blown problems.

Email warm-up made easy 

Email warm-up is an essential part of achieving high email deliverability.

And while warming up your email can take a few weeks, you can mostly do so on autopilot with a deliverability booster like lemwarm.

lemwarm plans start at $24/month, but its essential plan is free with lemlist’s Email Pro and Multichannel Expert plans.

FAQ

Is there a difference between email and domain warm-up?

Yes, email warm-up and domain warm-up are slightly different. Warming up an individual email is faster than warming up an entire sending domain.  Warming up an email involves warming up a single email address, while warming up a domain is about building up a sender reputation for the whole domain. Still, if you have a new domain and only need a single email address, you can warm it up regularly.

Can I speed up the warm-up process by sending more emails sooner?

You can do this with lemwarm. However, it’s a more risky strategy, since sending more emails sooner may result in internet service providers mistaking you for a spammer.

Can I warm up my email manually?

It’s possible, but it’ll take a lot of work. Remember, email warm-up is not just about increasing sending volume and frequency; you must also get replies to your emails. For more information, please read: What is email warm-up and why is it important?