Recently, the world’s largest email provider – Google – informed us that it has decided to part ways with all automated warm-up services for their email accounts.
Why?
Well, Google now deems this warm-up process a violation of their terms and wants it disabled for good.
We know this will be a huge switch for the whole industry. But it’s manageable.
See what’s changing and how, despite this change, you can stay on top of your cold emailing game.
What’s changing for cold email senders?
Long story short, along with all our fellow cold email tool players, we’ll no longer be able to provide an automated warm-up feature for Google accounts. Yup, if you’ve been using it – our Warm-up & Recovery is going away.
This change will come into force on 6th February, 2023, meaning that any ongoing Warm-up & Recovery for Google email addresses or domains will be switched off.
It will happen automatically – you don’t have to do anything.
As you can probably imagine, there was no democratic vote and the case wasn’t up for discussion. We were informed about the change in policy by Google and although we’d personally prefer to continue offering our Warm-up & Recovery option, as it was used by many of our customers, our hands are tied. We have no other choice but to accept this fact and fulfill Google’s wishes.
Is there a workaround?
Unfortunately, there’s no way around the policy and not adhering to Google’s terms is not an option – we’d be risking losing our Gmail API access. So we’re definitely staying on Google’s good side and following their rules.
The same goes for other warm-up tools. If you’re thinking of adding or switching to another right now – we’re pretty sure they all got the same message from Google, and will be shutting down soon.
The good news is, though, that you’ll still be able to run cold email campaigns effectively. Only a bit differently.
So how should you handle the change?
Here’s what we recommend:
1. Embrace manual email warm-up
You can still warm up your email address or entire domain – the only difference is that you won’t be able to do it automatically anymore.
We get it that it’s not ideal, since a manual warm-up is more time consuming than an automatic one. But warming up your email address and domain before proceeding with cold email outreach is key if you want your emails to land in the main inbox, rather than in the spam folder.
Our educated guess is that the trend against automated warm-up services will continue and spread to other email providers, too.
So it might be best to embrace manual warm-up right now.
2. Double down on other aspects of email deliverability
Email and domain warm-up is an essential step towards maintaining good deliverability – no doubt. But it’s also not the be-all and end-all of it.
In order to keep your deliverability high make sure to take care of its other aspects, like:
- Personalize your messages to show your email service provider that you’re a real human and not a spammer
- Opt for plain text emails, as including GIFs, videos or large images may trigger spam filters, which will block your message from being delivered
- Verify if email addresses exist, as sending messages to non-existent email addresses will cause them to bounce back
- Avoid salsey language and spam words, as these trigger spam filters
For a more detailed list, go to this blog post:
14 Deliverability Checks to Carry Out Before Sending Your Cold Email Campaign>>
3. Let us help you
If you’re at a loss at how to handle the change, hit us up at [email protected]. We’d be happy to help!
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