Table of Contents
Introduction
Email marketing is an integral part of any B2B or B2C business, but getting your emails to land in primary inboxes isn’t as straightforward as it should be. Thanks to scammers and bad actors, email service providers (ESPs) protect their users by filtering anything suspicious into the spam folder.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to trigger spam filters even when you’re a completely legitimate business, so marketers have to find ways around this. That’s where email deliverability and warmup tools come in. Their AI-powered features automate the entire process of email warmup, so you can conduct your campaigns from domains that ESPs trust.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the best tools for this job, along with their main features and competitive pricing.
What Is Email Warmup?
To catch scams and otherwise dangerous content, ESPs look for certain red flags when receiving emails:
- New sending domains with no reputation
- Senders whose emails rarely get opened
- Domains that sent out emails in bulk right away
- Spam complaints from users
As you can imagine, any cold outreach campaign starts with a new sending domain and large volumes of marketing emails, instantly triggering these filters. As more of your emails get sent to spam, open rates will hit rock bottom, and you may get some spam complaints from recipients, resulting in a situation where you’re triggering every red flag possible.
To make it worse, getting marked as spam is almost always permanent, and ESPs will start directing your emails to the spam folder automatically. When this happens, your sending domain becomes effectively useless.
The fix, however, is simple: don’t use new domains with no reputation for your cold outreach. Instead, every new domain should be used for “normal” purposes first, which involves natural back-and-forth with other email addresses. Every time you send an email and get a reply, your sender reputation increases.
Of course, having human agents sit and email each other all day, every day is not an option, which is why these tools rely on AI. The AI models simulate conversations over email, making sure every message is unique, natural, and relevant. The nature of email warmup is to start slow, but over time, your AI agents will send hundreds of natural-sounding emails a day, showing ESPs that it’s completely normal for this domain to send out mail in high volume.
Once your reputation is high enough to guarantee high levels of deliverability, you can start using it for your campaigns.
Top 3 Email Deliverability and Warmup Tools
Here are three of the most popular email deliverability and warmup tools.
1. Instantly
Instantly is a cold outreach and lead generation platform with extensive email warmup and deliverability features. It’s designed to boost your sender reputation and ensure your emails consistently land in the primary inbox, using a completely automated network to generate positive email interactions.
You can monitor the progress of every domain you warm up with a deliverability score that shows exactly how many of your emails are reaching the inbox versus the spam folder. It also shows how many replies you’ve received and how many times your email has been saved from spam.
Instantly also offers continuous warmup, so even after you start using a domain for large-scale sending, the tool will continue to simulate natural interactions to keep your sender reputation healthy.
Key Features Include:
- Customizable warmup: You can set the exact open rate, response rate, and spam protection settings for your warmup emails.
- Deliverability score: Allows you to see how many of your emails are landing in the inbox versus spam, so you know when your accounts are ready for sending.
- Automated network: Improves your sending reputation through positive email interactions within its network.
- AI optimization tools: Includes an AI Spintax and Spam Word Checker to help you optimize your email copy for better deliverability.
Pricing: Instantly’s base tier costs just $30 a month and provides unlimited email accounts and unlimited email warmup. You can send 5,000 emails a month with the base tier, or move up to the Hypergrowth plan to get 100,000 emails every month.
2. Warmbox.ai
Warmbox.ai is a specialized email warmup tool focused on raising your inbox reputation and increasing overall email deliverability.
The service works by automatically sending emails from your account and generating positive interactions within its network of over 35,000 real inboxes. This process signals to email service providers that your account is legitimate and trustworthy, preventing your messages from being flagged as spam. Warmbox provides detailed analytics and reports, allowing you to monitor your inbox reputation and spam score over time. It supports a wide variety of email providers and offers customizable options to fit various needs.
Key Features Include:
- Large inbox network: Utilizes a network of over 35,000 inboxes to generate realistic, positive engagement.
- Automated interactions: Automatically sends emails, removes them from spam folders, and generates replies to build a positive history.
- Detailed analytics: Offers comprehensive reports to track your inbox reputation and spam score.
- Customizable warmup: Provides flexible options to tailor the warmup process to your goals.
Pricing: Warmbox does not offer unlimited accounts. It costs $15 a month to warm up one account, and $69 a month to warm up three accounts.
3. Mails.ai
Mails.ai offers a free email warmup service that uses AI and a network of safe inboxes to automate the process of improving your sender reputation and deliverability.
The platform employs a unique, two-tiered warmup process to ensure optimal results. The first tier focuses on building your sender reputation through realistic, human-like interactions, while the second tier works to ensure your actual email content is recognized as spam-free, boosting the success of your outreach efforts.
Key Features Include:
- Dual-layer warmup process: Features a ‘Mailbox Warmup’ to build sender reputation and a ‘Campaign Warmup’ to ensure content is not flagged as spam.
- Human-like algorithm: Uses AI and a network of safe inboxes to simulate realistic email exchanges.
- Spam recovery: Helps keep your emails out of spam folders and enhances your sending reputation with positive interactions.
- Deliverability monitor: Provides detailed reports to monitor your email deliverability as your account warms up.
Pricing: The email warmup tool is available for free, while lead generation and AI Writer features start at $24 a month.
Final Thoughts
Email warmup greatly improves deliverability, but sometimes you will have bad luck and get affected by spam filters more than you should. For this reason, tools that offer unlimited accounts and warmups are a far better deal. If one domain takes a hit to its reputation, you can easily replace it with another. That’s why Instantly is at the top of this list, as it provides unlimited accounts for a great price, along with continuous warmup that maintains high reputation scores.
