GUEST OPINION: Here’s something people in the tech world can definitely relate to: Inboxes tend to overflow with pitches, updates, alerts, newsletters, partnership requests… The list goes on and on and on.
If you’re using email as part of your communication and marketing strategy, getting your message seen is half the battle.
Tech leaders, most especially women breaking through a male-dominated space, often rely on email for fundraising, partnerships, and sales. But spam filters are becoming sharper, stricter, and more unforgiving. In fact, even the sharpest of strategies and even the most beautifully-written emails will have no effect if the emails don’t even land in the inbox.
Why are your emails landing in the spam folder?
Tech professionals receive hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of emails per day. For leaders launching startups or leading sales teams, this makes it even more challenging. Women in tech, who are already juggling outreach amidst other hurdles, can’t afford this. After all, a single ignored email to a potential partner could already delay plans.
Often, founders and business owners turn to email first as the primary channel for outreach. However, they jump straight into sending emails and then being confused as to why these emails land in spam.
Email warmup provides the solution for this, as it gradually builds a sender’s domain reputation so that mailbox providers recognise them as trustworthy, credible, and legitimate. Without a positive sender reputation, there is a high likelihood of emails landing in spam.
So here’s the truth about the inbox crisis and cold outreach is this: There is no shortcut to success in outreach. Implementing all the best practices in email writing and marketing will go to waste if senders skip the email warm up process.
Why warmup matters for tech leaders
- Proper warmup protects your sender reputation and your tech startup’s brand. Mailbox providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo judge you based on your past behaviour. If you have a history of spam complaints, they will take this as a red flag. Potential prospects, leads, or partners judge you by your current performance. If your emails land in spam, it doesn’t really give off a good image.
- Warmup maximises deliverability and visibility. As mentioned earlier, the best-crafted message fails right away. Warming up email accounts and domains first before sending large-scale campaigns significantly increases the chances of your outreach campaigns landing in primary inboxes.
- It safely scales outreach for campaigns. Tech leaders often need to jump from sending a handful of emails to thousands during product launches or fundraising. A warmed up domain gives you the leeway to safely ramp up campaigns as needed without suspicious spikes.
- Reduced risk of blacklisting and domain damage. For new domains or previously inactive domains, sending large volumes can also lead to being blacklisted. Once this happens and the domain is damaged, it is costly and time-consuming to repair.
- Optimises ROI on tools and content. Tech leaders invest heavily in CRMs, copywriting, and personalisation tools, but none of that returns value if emails are sent to spam. Using email warmup tools ensures you get the best out of your investments.
Your step-by-step email warmup guide
- Authenticate everything: Implement SPF records to verify your IP, DKIM for signature encryption, and DMARC for policy enforcement. Tools scan and fix in minutes.
- Begin slowly: Send 10-15 emails daily to your most engaged contacts like colleagues, newsletter subs. Personalise your emails as much as you can to encourage engagement.
- Engage actively: Open replies, mark as important. Aim for many positive interactions to signal value.
- Scale gradually: Progress to 20 emails a day and then 50.
- Monitor regularly: As you increase sending volume, monitor open rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints for any tell-tale signs of domain reputation decreasing. Increasing spam complaints may be a sign to lower sending volume for a time until metrics stabilise.
Integrating email warmup tools into the overall strategy
Email warmup, done manually, takes about two to four weeks of daily effort, monitoring, and analysis. While it works wonders, it scales poorly for teams, especially women in tech who are aiming to conduct larger-scale campaigns. Here’s where Warmy’s email warm up solution comes in by doing the following:
- Automated warmup: This includes automatically sending a small number of emails initially, gradually increasing the volume while tracking email performance. Since this happens automatically behind the scenes, business owners can focus on other activities.
- Engagement tracking: These tools monitor email responses to ensure you’re getting the engagement needed to improve your sender reputation. Advanced tools also simulate real interactions, such as opening emails, reading emails, and retrieving them from spam. These send positive signals to mailbox providers about your sender reputation.
- Real-time analytics: Tools provide detailed insights into your email performance, so you always know where you stand and how your emails are performing across different providers.
- Domain health monitoring and checking: Beyond warmup, Warmy also provides constant scanning of your domain reputation by checking factors that contribute to it, such as inbox placement, spam complaints, blacklisting status, and authentication protocols.
Future-proof your email game and let women in tech shine
Email outreach is an essential tool for tech industry leaders, but it’s only effective if it reaches the inbox. Unfortunately, email deliverability and email warmup are concepts not known to some tech founders, which can dampen their outreach efforts.
As email providers become stricter and competition for attention increases, maintaining a healthy sender reputation and optimising deliverability are two key ingredients for success in the industry.
Using Warmy’s email warmup to ensure that your emails land in the inbox, increase engagement, and protect your sender reputation. For tech leaders, this strategy will definitely help you cut through the noise and keep your email strategy on track.
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