I’m sure it’s not news for you that you need to warm up a fresh domain before starting with email outreach.
Although a newly registered domain warm-up takes way longer than the new mailbox warm-up, the steps you take to prepare a domain for outreach are pretty similar to the ones you go through with a new email address.
When you send out emails from a domain that hasn’t been properly warmed up, you’re risking burning your domain. And if that happens, your emails will stop getting delivered.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but when your emails stop reaching the inbox, you can blame:
your copy,
your prospect base,
email address configuration,
your IP address,
your domain.
While you can control your copy and prospect base, plus recover your email & IP address (for most ESPs there’s a limit on how many times you can do this, usually 5 times a year, so be careful), a burned domain is pretty useless for sending emails. And what’s more important, all users who share a domain with you will also have a problem. Even if they don’t do anything wrong.
How much time should I spend on warming up my domain?
That depends on your domain host. Various hosts require different periods of time to stop considering a new domain suspicious. You need to spend a few days or even weeks to gain their trust. The longer you work for a good reputation, the more they trust you.
Let’s clear a few things first.
Every domain has its own reputation. What kind of a reputation a domain gets depends on many factors.
One of the factors is age.
Reputation is something that is earned over time. It doesn’t happen automatically. What’s more, when you register a new domain, it’s treated as suspicious. Spam filters check domain’s age and when it’s younger than a month, they will mark it as suspicious. It’s done by default. And when you send messages from a suspicious domain, your messages are treated as suspicious too.
That being said, this process of gaining a good reputation will take about three months.
However, there are a couple of things that may prolong or even disturb the process:
a suspicious frequency of email sending (for instance, sending 100 emails over the first couple of days)
a low-quality email list (a lot of bounced emails)
setting up more than 1 email account at once
Therefore, sending massive campaigns to untargeted prospects with many follow-ups is a sure-fire way to a bad sending reputation. To earn a good one, take it slowly. Just follow those 4 steps.
STEP 1: Set up an email account
Set up a new email address that you’re going to use for outreach. Learn the sending limits set by your email provider which will tell you how many emails you can send a day.
It’s important not to rush anything. Keep it slow and your domain will get warmed up without any issues.
STEP 2: Configure your email address
First, you need to take care of the MX record (mail exchange record) which is used to direct email to a mail server. Set up the “from line” and a signature. Then get onto technical configuration. Set up SPF & DKIM, plus DMARC records. All of those are crucial when it comes to sending and receiving email. This is a technically complex procedure, so if you are not tech-savvy the best thing to do is contact your IT department- if you have any or your ESP support.
STEP 3: Send a handful of emails manually
Send emails one by one, manually. But don’t do it in the same week you register a domain. Do it in the second or third week. And start with a couple of emails a day.
And since the quality of your email list plays a huge role here, send them to addresses you know are valid and active. They can be your emails. Or emails of your friends who will gladly reply.
Try to reach out to business emails. If you can, ask your friends to give you their business email addresses. Ask them to respond to you, as they would normally do when engaging in any other correspondence.
It’s important to make it seem natural. The frequency and volume of emails should seem as natural as possible so don’t use any automation at this point.
The email content plays an important role too. Write like a human being. Don’t copy and paste some text you found online. Make it simple and conversational.
STEP 4: Prepare a test campaign in Autoklose
After you check your domain reputation (you can use this awesome tool), log into Autoklose and send your first automated email campaign. You need up to twenty email addresses that surely won’t bounce. In an ideal scenario, those addresses belong to your friends and colleagues, so you know they are real and you’ll get a reply.
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If you have any questions do not hesitate to initiate a live chat.
Your autoklose.com team!
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