Learn how to keep your email reputation intact when onboarding with a new email marketing platform by nailing the warm-up period. 

You finally did it. You're making the leap to a new ESP to finally combine your email and SMS technology. Gone are the days of managing campaigns across multiple platforms, exporting lists, importing lists, running reports just to copy the numbers into another spreadsheet to compare channels. 

While you may have taken the first step, you may still be feeling a little overwhelmed. We all know it can also be daunting to switch to a new marketing platform and consolidate your tech. When talking with customers about switching to a new email marketing platform, there are some questions around the warm-up period. 

You’ve spent years building, maintaining, and engaging your list. Why might you have to slow that momentum down as you migrate? The short answer: To make the mailbox providers happy and ensure emails from your new domain are delivered.  

In this post, we’ll explore what you need to know to make your migration to a new ESP a success—just as we’ve done for thousands of marketing teams over the last few years. 

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Why is there a warm-up period for email marketing onboarding?

The first step in moving to a new email platform is the warm-up period. Skipping this step can destroy deliverability and have long-term impacts on your sender reputation.

Mailbox providers like Gmail and Microsoft like this warm-up period as it makes it more difficult for bad actors to spam people. The mailbox providers are seeing that something is different or new with your email sends, like a new IP address. New is unknown and, fair or not, judged heavily and treated cautiously.

This is your time to put your best foot forward and prove to the mailbox providers, your ESP, and your subscribers that your emails are valuable and wanted. This warm-up period can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

It starts by sending emails to your most engaged subscribers and then slowly sending to a broader audience. The mailbox providers are analyzing your emails to better understand the volume of emails you send and how recipients are engaging with your emails. Basically, the mailbox providers are asking: Does an email from this sender belong in the inbox?

Let’s look at a real-life example. Blenders Eyewear moved their email to Attentive to implement a unified, cross-channel strategy. Not having their data in one place made it challenging for Blenders to accurately track subscriber engagement. 

Our deliverability team handled the inbox warming process over a 20-30-day period. There was no interruption to their email marketing efforts—and there was an increase in engagement rates during the warm-up period.

Attentive expertly managed the warm-up period from beginning to end, consistently reporting back to us with progress updates and providing valuable insights into areas of improvement.

-  Kyra Stickford, Marketing Retention Coordinator, Blenders Eyewear

After moving both SMS and email to Attentive, they achieved a 136% increase in open rates and a 60% increase in revenue from their Browse Abandonment Journeys, while maintaining a 99% email deliverability rate. Their SMS program’s performance also got a boost and they now have an average 9.2% CVR. Compare that to our benchmark of 2.1% for E-commerce/accessories brands.

If 30 days after your warm-up period you’re seeing a group of people who didn’t open any emails, exclude them from sends. By not engaging with our emails, this group is only hurting your deliverability. In turn, mailbox filters will be more critical of your sends and may not put them in the inbox. 

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Email metrics to track during inbox warming 

Before talking about metrics to track during the inbox warming process, it’s important to report on metrics before you start your email platform migration. That way you can compare the performance of your emails pre- and post-migration.

The metrics you’ll want to pay the most attention to during this time include: 

• Delivery rates
• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates

Tracking these metrics allows you to quickly adjust your email strategy during the inbox warming process. But there may be other metrics or goals tied to migrating your email program. 

Luxury bedding and loungewear brand Cozy Earth uses a variety of Attentive’s solutions. When they really looked at the performance of their marketing, they were zeroing in on conversions and revenue. But it was time to change how they were measuring performance and look at their results by finding a balance between revenue and ROI. Combining email and SMS on one platform was the path forward to reaching that goal. 

We conducted thorough A/B tests as we slowly migrated a couple of our abandoned flows over to Attentive—we compared the performance of our previous provider and Attentive for around two consecutive months. And the results were striking. It was insane how many more abandoned emails and how many more customers Attentive was identifying.

-  Weston Clark, Director of Customer Retention, Cozy Earth

With more efficient tools and better integration, Cozy Earth can focus on delivering high-quality, personalized communications to their subscribers. Email campaigns now drive 214% more sessions than their previous provider, highlighting Attentive’s effectiveness in increasing traffic and engagement. Deliverability and engagement metrics also saw substantial improvements, with a 99% delivery rate, a 59% unique open rate, and a 6.5% unique click rate.

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Using your new email technology to its full potential

You may have noticed a common theme. Marketing teams are bringing SMS and email into one platform to unify messaging strategies and get a comprehensive view of their cross-channel subscribers. After the warm-up period and setting email up for success, you’re set to use your marketing platform to its full potential.

That’s what Cecil and Lou did when they combined email and SMS with Attentive. By uncovering subscriber preferences and identifying behavior patterns, they were able to categorize subscribers more accurately and tailor their messaging strategy.

This targeted approach to engagement led to a 57% increase in unique clicks and a 63% decrease in email bounces, reinforcing the connection between more personalized content, improved deliverability, and a positive sender reputation.

We now have a comprehensive view of the subscriber lifecycle, enabling precise targeting and highly effective communication strategies.

-  Gina Moers, Marketing, Cecil and Lou

They use both email and SMS touchpoints in a single journey to create more dynamic and cohesive experiences for their subscribers. Doing this has ultimately led to a 69% decrease in unsubscribe rates. These results also include a 4,664% surge in email revenue and a 40% rise in SMS revenue. 

Another benefit of powering your email and SMS sends from one platform is being able to use robust identity solutions to understand who’s visiting your site, what they’re doing, and deliver personalized experiences to keep subscribers engaged. 

By having insight into who your engaged subscribers are in one platform, you can send your email and SMS messages with confidence. Increase your confidence in your sends by letting AI do it for you and automatically deliver messages at the time each subscriber is most likely to convert. Elizabeth Pingry, Director of Marketing at Marleylilly, said, “We saw the AI Send Time have conversion rates of double our manual send times.”

‍Ready to power your email and SMS marketing out of one platform? Learn more about Attentive Email by scheduling a demo.