Email Marketing Solutions

There’s a reason that runners go on a warm-up run before starting a big race. Or that professional foot players warm up for hours before kick-off.

Because if you go from no activity to HIGH activity… something is going to break down.

You’re going to pull a hammy, tweak an ankle, or do something that’s going to derail your performance.

The same principle applies to sending more emails. If you are just starting to send emails this year, or you’ve been sending a low volume and want to increase that volume…

You need to warm up first.

I’ve got five steps to take if you are planning on sending more emails this year and you want to warm-up appropriately so that your emails perform at the highest level.

These steps are how I was able to take an underperforming footwear brand from less than 5% of revenue from Klaviyo when they were sending less than one email per week to 25% in less than three months.

All while increasing open rates, click through rates, AND the size of their engaged segment.

It’s also how I took a cold email list and in 6 weeks warmed it up before BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) and was able to do over $200K in email revenue in the month of November alone.

Why is warming up important?

But first, why is warming up important for email? Why can’t you just start sending an email every day to your list?

If your engagement levels are good (open rates above 35-40%, click through rates (CTR) above 1%, and you’ve got good segments in place) and you’ve been sending emails consistently, then you can ramp up your sending frequency pretty quickly.

But if your engagement is low and you’re blasting emails every once in a blue moon to your entire list… you need to follow my steps.

Because:

• A proper warm up tells email service providers like GMail, Apple, Yahoo, and Outlook that your messages are coming from a reputable and credible source. And as a result…
• Warming up your email domain appropriately ensures that more emails land in the inbox, therefore getting opened, read, and clicked on.
• Also, a thorough warm-up will allow you to test things like sending time, subject lines, and email types that resonate with your engaged audience. 

What happens if you don’t warm up correctly?

So what happens if you don’t warm-up correctly? What happens if you just throw caution out the window and just start sending daily emails?

Well for one, you’ll probably pull a hammy…

But more seriously, the email service providers (GMail, Apple, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) will begin to put your emails in jail (A.K.A. the SPAM folder.)

All it takes is 1 in 1000 email recipients to mark your email as SPAM before you get locked up.

Not to mention that these ESPs (email service providers) have their own algorithms to determine if email messages are SPAM.

Things like sender reputation, email content, and engagement with prior emails.

And if you are careless, you’re able to ruin your email domain quickly and run the risk of having to set up a brand new domain and start all over again.

Nobody wants to do that.

So without further ado… here are the FIVE steps to take when warming up your email domain.

The five steps for a proper warm-up

Ok… so you’re staring at 2023 knowing that you need to make the most of the only marking channel that you OWN – your email list.

But you’ve spent 2022 sending occasional emails to your list or maybe you haven’t sent anything to your list in a long time.

Don’t stress. Take a deep breath and follow these steps:

FIRST – make sure that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are set up correctly. 

I’ve written a lot about this and the importance of having these set up. So to keep it simple, just know that this needs to be done. 

You can find my previous blog where I talked about the importance of deliverability here.

If you’ve never done this before, the process isn’t too bad. Your email service provider (Klaviyo, Active Campaign, MailChimp, etc.) should have help articles that walk you through how to do this.

For Klaviyo, you’ll set up a dedicated sending domain. I’ve done this for multiple brands and it makes a HUGE difference.

SECOND – Identify your highly engaged segment.

My engaged segment is usually anyone who’s opened or clicked on an email in the last 90 days, OR purchased something in the last X days (depending on product type) OR been active on site in the last 30 days.

But I want you to find your HIGHLY engaged segment. These are people who have opened or clicked on one of your last 5 campaigns. Hopefully that’s within the last 6 weeks. If not, adjust the time frame to include the last 5 email campaigns that you’ve sent out.

I would also include anyone who’s been active on site in the last 15 days and anyone who’s made a purchase recently. (Once again going to depend on product type. For a consumable, that could be in the last 30 days, for apparel it might be 90.)

Once you have your HIGHLY engaged segment, hold it close. This list is going to be the backbone of how you increase your email frequency.

You should have three segments created at this point:

1. Unengaged
2. Engaged
3. HIGHLY Engaged

THIRD – Send increased emails ONLY to your highly engaged segment.

If you’ve been sending emails once per week, continue to send to your engaged segment. Send any additional emails ONLY to your HIGHLY engaged segment.

We want to show GMail, Apple, Yahoo, and Outlook that people want to open, read, and click on your emails.

And by sending more emails to people that you know are going to open, read, and click on our emails, you are showing the email services providers that people want to open and engage with your emails.

As you consistently send more emails, you can begin to send those additional emails to your larger engaged segment, and eventually we will include the unengaged to try to re-engage them.

But don’t rush this step. You need to make sure that you’re getting great engagement on your emails first.

FOURTH – Create or optimize your flows/automations that’ll get high engagement.

Your automated flows can be a double edged sword. They “make money while you sleep” but they can also bring down your deliverability by having low open or click through rates…

So here you want to check on all of your flows. Maybe turn off any that aren’t getting high engagement.

Focus on having your Welcome, Abandoned Cart, and Post Purchase flows optimized and firing. 

Go with shorter flows to start and then expand as you see engagement increase.

Here’s my recommendations for length:

• Welcome – no more than 5 emails
• Abandoned cart – no more than 3 emails
• Post Purchase – no more than 3 emails

These three are your CORE flows and should be in place for every brand. They reach customers at crucial points in their journey and help to build engagement in your list.

By keeping them short, you have a lower risk of people disengaging towards the end of the flow.

A 10 email welcome series is great when done right, but if you’ve got a 20% open rate on the 9th email it’s hurting your deliverability.

FIFTH – Include CTAs in your email that ask for replies

Getting a reply to your email and responding is one of the BEST ways to increase your deliverability. It tells those pesky ESPs that you are a real person and it’s the highest level of engagement you can have with your email domain.

So as you build your welcome flow – ask for replies. Could be questions about the brand, product, how did you find us, etc.

As you build your abandoned cart flow – ask for replies. Keep it simple, ask if they have any questions about their order.

Occasionally when you send out your campaigns or blast emails, ask for replies.

And more importantly, do your best to respond to as many replies as possible.

TL;DR

1. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
2. Create your engaged and highly engaged segment
3. Send additional emails ONLY to your highly engaged segment
4. Optimize high engagement flows – Welcome, Abandoned Cart, Post Purchase
5. Ask for replies to your emails

And now that we’ve covered the 5 things you should do…

Don’t do these 3 things!

As you go through your warm-up process… make sure you don’t do these three things.

They are potential death sentences.

DON’T send to everyone on your list!

Sending to your full list is guaranteed to get you low engagement metrics. It’s this way for every brand. 

The more emails you send with low engagement, the higher your emails rank on the SPAM filters. And high marks is not what you want here.

Simply – when you send emails that aren’t getting read or clicked, you are more likely to be considered SPAM.

DON’T send promotional (flash sale style) emails!

Email content is a big factor in the ESPs SPAM algorithm. So if you are only sending flash sales or promotional heavy emails, it’s a red flag.

I’m not saying you can’t ever send these emails, but hold off on them while you are going through this process.

You want to send emails that people want to read and engage with. AND you can sell in these emails.

DON’T rush to make a huge jump in sending frequency.

If you’ve been sending one email a week (or less) for the last year, then don’t expect to be sending 4 emails a week by the end of the month.

Focus on increasing frequency by one email per week every two-three weeks. Provided you are getting good engagement.

That means if you want to send 4 emails per week it’s probably going to take you the better part of two months. 

Slow and steady wins the race.

Next Steps:

When you’re ready to go beyond the basics and really supercharge your email marketing, here are a few additional steps to take…

Include a two-step sign-up for your email list. 

This means that people will need to confirm their email address after signing up. This may reduce the overall size of your list, but it’s not size that counts.

It’s WHO is on your list. And the more people on your list who want to be there, the better.

Send valuable emails.

Value doesn’t just mean educational. Yes, some emails should educate your readers on your brand or products. But more frequently, readers want to be entertained or inspired.

Be funny, tell stories, get creative.

And sell something with every email.

Monitor deliverability.

Deliverability isn’t a set it and forget it thing. It needs to be constantly monitored in case something goes wrong.

There are multiple tools out there to help like Google Postmaster or Litmus.

Always keep an eye on your metrics.

Keep a consistent sending cadence!

Don’t do all this work to send 3 or 4 emails a week only to lose stem in April and go back to once per week.

More emails = more money!

So once you’ve got your sending frequency up… KEEP it there.

Summary

If you’re a new brand or a smaller brand, getting your email deliverability and sending cadence right is one of the best things you can do to grow your brand.

It creates a flywheel that generates more revenue, giving you more funds for ads, leading to more people on website, which will increase the size of your email list.

If you’re looking for someone to help warm up your email or you need someone to take over your email channel – send me an email (ben@henkenmarketing.com) or fill out this form and I’ll be in touch.