Warmup is over. Now what. The handoff to cold campaigns

post_warmup · 2026-04-12 · 1,870 views

Warmup completes and everybody\'s excited to start sending cold. Then day three of cold sends the deliverability tanks. Here\'s the handoff checklist I run between warmup completing and cold campaigns starting, and why it matters.

Day 14 plus: check DMARC reports. After two weeks of warmup, pull DMARC aggregate reports for the sending domain. Look for authentication failures from legitimate sources, weird sending patterns, or third-party services trying to send on your behalf. DMARC reports show what receiving servers actually see, which is often different from what you think is happening. If the reports show clean authentication across the warmup window, you\'re ready.

Run deliverability tests. Use GlockApps or a similar seed-list tool to check inbox placement across major providers. Target 85 percent plus inbox placement. If you\'re under 80 percent, hold off on cold campaigns and figure out why. Could be DNS config, could be IP reputation on shared infrastructure, could be content issues in the warmup messages themselves. Cold sending at 70 percent inbox placement is a fast way to burn the domain.

Start cold at 5 per inbox per day. Not 15. Not 20. Five. The warmup built the foundation. Cold email stresses the foundation in a new way because you\'re sending to addresses that have never replied to you. Ramping up gradually protects the reputation you built during warmup. Day one of cold: 5 per inbox. Day two: 5. Day three: check deliverability. If it\'s holding, ramp to 7. Day five: ramp to 10. Day ten: ramp to 12. Don\'t go above 15 to 20 per inbox per day on sustained campaigns.

Keep warmup running alongside cold campaigns. Most operators turn off warmup the day cold sends start. Don\'t. Warmup generates the engagement signals (opens, replies, marks-as-important) that protect your sender reputation. When you\'re sending cold email that gets lower engagement rates, warmup traffic offsets that by maintaining a baseline of "good" sending signals. Reduce warmup volume once cold is running (3 to 5 warmup sends per day is plenty), but don\'t turn it off entirely.

Monitor bounce rate daily for the first week. Cold email bounce rate should stay under 2 percent. If it creeps toward 3 to 5 percent, something\'s wrong with the list. Pause campaigns, clean the list, verify again. Sending into 5 percent bounces for a week will tank the reputation you spent 14 days building.

Reply handling ready on day one. Positive replies from cold campaigns can come on day one. If reply handling isn\'t set up (unified inbox, CRM sync, or forwarding to a master inbox), those early replies get missed and the meeting bookings go cold. Reply handling should be tested before cold campaigns launch, not after.

Warmup ending is not the finish line. It\'s the start of a second, more delicate phase where you prove the warmed inbox can handle cold sending without collapsing. Two to three weeks of patient ramping turns warmed inboxes into reliable cold sending accounts.