In a highly competitive world, it is not uncommon for even established businesses to run out of leads. One of the best ways to stay successful in business is to maintain a close adaptation pace with the ever changing rubrics of the game. The least strategy that can give you an edge over your competitors could just make the difference between success and failure. Today, we will be looking at domain warming and why it is an indispensable tool to include in your marketing arsenal.
If you send any form of email - cold, newsletter, or onboarding - then you must maintain a good sender reputation in order to optimize deliverability and evade relegation to the spam bin. Sender reputation is generally low on domains with low open rates. This could be due to a lack of an effective email marketing strategy or simply the domain itself, but this can always be improved.
What is Domain Warming ?
Domain warming is a process which is used by the email marketers to generate a boost in email deliverability and hence open rates. It entails establishing a good sending reputation for a new domain or one that hasn't sent emails in a while. The warm-up procedure involves sending small amounts of emails from the new domain at first, then progressively increasing the volume of email each day or week according to a defined timetable.
Email sent from a domain with poor sending reputation or an unusual sending pattern is suspicious to mailbox providers. They must safeguard their clients from spam, thus they will block bulk or massive volumes of emails sent from a new domain, as spammers are the most common senders of such mails. Warming up your domain will help mailbox providers trust your domain's identity and credibility. Generally domains need 30 days of warming with 0 spam report in the lasts 7 days to be well warmed up and ready for use. You should continue warming after this time nevertheless. It is important to keep one's domain in a constant state of warming even while it is in use. This helps uphold a good domain reputation making email deliverability ever better.
Here's a comprehensive approach on keeping a good sender reputation.
How does it work
In a very lay manner, you can warm a domain by manually sending a few emails, say 2-5 to a few credible addresses you own or know, open and reply to them, mark or designate them as important, and have them manually removed from the spam folder if they did land there. The next day, repeat the process and slightly increase the number of emails sent, and continue the process on and on everyday for atleast a month. This can be very tedious and time consuming but nothing to worry about, there is a way out.
There are a couple of services that will automatically send emails from your domain to people who have subscribed for updates from you, which is a great way to build up a good sender reputation. But how can you be certain your emails will even get to your subscribers inbox to begin with ? In case it lands in their spam folders, I guess you won't write your subscribers asking them to mark your emails as "not spam" right ? This is where domain warming comes in and it is a fully automated process. You can save your time for more productive work and I will show you how.
Murlist is known to offer some of the best email warming services in the industry with a network of 2500+ mailboxes. Nothing complicated, once you configure your domain for warming on Murlist, we create the email contents, connect to your SMTP and then send the emails for you. In fact, we send the emails for you, and then to you, to make a complete warming cycle with unique, naturally sounding emails completely void of anything that can trigger spam filters. Additionally, most mailboxes in our network have a filter enabled to prevent emails from going to spam, and even if they landed in spam, our system pulls it out and marks it as not spam (into inbox). Absolutely amazing, right ?
That's not all. We equally manage open and reply rates, keeping them at optimized levels in a fully automated process, setting you up for great success. You therefore want to make sure that there is enough space in your mailbox for all the messages that will come in. But wait, if all those warmup emails are populating your inbox everyday, won't that interfere with your normal mailbox usage ? As always, there's a way out. You can create a filter to automatically archive the incoming emails and store them in a separate folder, thereby keeping your inbox clean without affecting the warming process.
It is important to note that, Murlist gives you the option to track open rates or even setup your own custom domain for domain tracking.
How does domain warming differ from mailbox warming ?
You guessed it right, every mailbox is linked to a domain, making the differential margin between domain and mailbox warming very slim. Nevertheless, lets explore this a little further to see if we can make out any discrepancies.
In this context, one cannot go without the other. You cannot warm a domain without making use of a mailbox associated with that domain, and you can't warm a mailbox without the warming effect dissipating to the domain because during warming setup, DNS configuration for SPF and DMARC records, as well as DKIM authority for each mailbox or IP address, are validated at the domain level so it naturally inherits the reputation of all mailboxes under it.
You may wonder if a single mailbox is enough to warm a domain and related IP address. Understandably, different mailboxes under a particular domain might have different reputations and hence affect the domain differently. Even in the same domain, some mailboxes perform better than others. This is largely because reputation starts at the mailbox level before climbing upwards. Consequently, to have a domain well warmed up, it is adviceable to add many active mailboxes of that particular domain for warming as this helps rank up volume/day for the same domain.
Note : We generally refrain from using 'domain warming' in marketing as we found that warming is much more effective at the mailbox level. This is due to certain variables that differ from mailbox to mailbox, like age and sending history. The term 'email warming' or 'mailbox warming' is more common. However for most businesses looking forward to build a domain with good reputation for their email campaigns, the term 'domain warming' is much more applicable.
Supposed you had an established business domain with two well-performing mailboxes ; ex1@business.com and ex2@business.com, one would expect your domain (business.com) to have a good reputation since it inherits from both mailboxes. Nevertheless, if you create a third mailbox, ex3@business.com under same domain, it is not prudent to assume this new mailbox will automatically do well. We advise you to warm it up before use. Although it may start off with a better reputation than mailboxes of new domains, warming will further improve it's reputation enabling it attain better deliverability standards with ease.
Is domain warming right for your business?
You may wonder if you need to warm your domain and how often. Email marketing is a great way to reach out to your customers and engage with them. It is often used by companies as a lead generation tool as it helps them reach out to potential customers who haven't taken any action on their site, or keep established customers updated. As email marketing is considered to be one of the most cost-effective channels for marketing and advertising, many companies are now using this strategy to catch the attention of prospects and eventually convert them into loyal customers. But the success of email marketing depends on how many people open and read your emails.
We all want to get the email opened. Emails are an important part of our work and so is the inbox. It’s not just about how many emails you send per day, but also about how many of those emails get opened by your prospects. A warm domain increases your chances of having your email opened by 40%. So if you want to have your emails opened, then warming the domain or mailbox is the way to go.
The secret is to keep your mailbox warm, even when you're not actively sending email or when everything seems fine.
Mailbox/Domain warming is undoubtedly one of the most successful strategies for improving open rates. It helps you train your audience to recognize your company’s voice and familiarize them with what you have to offer. This strategy not only improves open rates, but also lowers unsubscribe rates and increases customer engagement.
In summary, there are many benefits of mailbox/domain warming for your business. It helps you reach a wider audience ,and also increases the chances that someone will make a purchase from your company. This is something you definitely won't want your business to miss.
What is the recommended domain warming service for you?
If you are looking for a good mailbox/domain warming service out there, Murlist is definitely the perfect service for you. When it comes to mailbox/domain warming, our customers have not only expressed great satisfaction in the quality and efficiency of our tools in comparison with other warming services, but are often marveled by the fact that we place no restrictions on the type and number of domains that you can add for warming under a single account, as long as it doesn't exceed your subscription quota. You can add and remove as many and as often as you see fit, at no extra charge.
What Sets MurList Apart
✔️ Murlist improves email sender reputation on autopilot, helping your emails avoid spam.
✔️ We constantly monitor the health of your inbox.
✔️ We monitor your account blacklist status.
✔️ Murlist incrementally ramps up the number of emails sent per day.
✔️ We automatically read and reply to messages. You have full control over the reply rate.
✔️ Integrate with any Mail Provider.
In general, we integrate with all mail providers with SMTP.
✔️ We send email Google auto marks as important.
We don't just get you out of spam, we make you trustworthy enough to be automatically marked as important by Google's Gmail Magic. That's how much result our services have achieved.
✔️We help you increase ROI on email campaigns.
✔️ Unparalleled Customer Support :
Please contact us at support@murlist.com or use the chat box below if you have any questions. We are always ready to address any queries you may have.