At Warmup Inbox, one of the primary aspects of the inbox warming process involves both successfully sending out emails from your connected inbox, as well as receiving emails from our network that then get engaged with and replied to. Being able to accept incoming emails is an important aspect of the process as this activity overall helps to build up your reputation with both your own email provider, as well as the email providers of recipients you are engaging with.
In order for us to ensure that the inbox warming process is smooth for everyone involved, we take various steps to ensure that all connected inboxes within our network are able to successfully accept mail that is being directed at other connected inboxes. If any type of issue comes up with a connected inbox preventing it from being able to accept incoming mail from the network, we will temporarily disable this inbox from being sent mail in order to avoid any potential bounces or issues for other senders.
In this article, we will explore some of the primary reasons why your associated inbox is unable to accept or process incoming mail from the network. This does not cover every possible situation that can arise with issues relating to accepting incoming mail, so if you are experiencing any type of issues not covered here please write in to support and we will be happy to help with your given situation.
1. Ensure That Your MX Records Are Properly In Place
MX Records exist under an associated domain’s DNS that has a mail server tied to it, and these records are responsible for managing which mail server is responsible for handling and receiving incoming mail. If these records are not in place under an associated domain's DNS, this will cause multiple issues with how your mail server handles incoming emails.
If you are running into issues with your inbox being disconnected/not being able to receive mail from the network, it is important to check and make sure that these records under your DNS are still up to date for your current workspace/mail server.
A quick way to check if these records are properly in place is to utilize MxToolBox’s MX Record lookup option, as this will highlight quickly if these records are present under your DNS or not. To confirm they are working properly for your current configuration, you can also run a test with Mail-Tester and they will highlight if these records, alongside other records that will be covered in this article, are present and working as intended.
If you find that you do not have your MX Records set up at all under your given domain, you would need to look up what specific records you need to add for your given email provider. For Google and Microsoft, I have linked their resources on these records below.
2. Check That Your Inbox/Domain Is Not Under Any Blacklists
Typically being on a blacklist will only have a negative effect on the outgoing email messages you are sending out, but being present on a blacklist can also affect what emails are successfully delivered or not depending on the configuration of a sender's mail solution.
Outside of this potentially having a negative effect on your future outreach campaigns, being on a blacklist is less than ideal for the warming process so it is recommended both for receiving mail from our network, and the well-being of your own sending solution to delist from any blacklists you may be on. For any connected inbox under our platform, our reputation tool will check and highlight if you are present on any of the most common blacklists, and this can be found by navigating to the metrics page of a connected inbox and navigating down to the blacklist section. As well you can utilize a tool such as Blacklist Checker to quickly perform a lookup of your given domain.
For delisting, all lists operate in a different manner and criteria for how to get off so you will need to refer to the blacklists given website for specific instructions on how to do this for any given list you are present under. Another note regarding blacklists in this context, The UCEPROTECT, SORBS, and BACKSCATTERER are all very common blacklists to be on due to the nature of how these lists operate, and delisting primarily comes down to the email/domain provider themselves.
3. Ensure That You Have Your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Records Properly In Place
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all records relating to email activity that help provide an additional layer of security for incoming and outgoing messages coming from/to your associated mail server. While having these records in place is not required for our platform, they only help the inbox warming process as well as help to avoid any potential issues from arising for how incoming mail is handled under your inbox.
To check if you have these records properly in place, the quickest way to do this would be to perform a test with Mail-Tester as they would highlight under the authentication section of your results if you have these records properly in place or not.
If some/all of these records are not present under your DNS, our suggestion would be to get them setup as soon as possible, as they have a direct influence on deliverability and help provide additional security from email spoofing and other nefarious activities.
For how to add your SPF and DKIM records for Google and Microsoft/Office 365, below are some helpful resources on how to get this setup.
For Google:
For Microsoft / Office 365
For DMARC, since this is not dependent on your email provider and works alongside SPF and DKIM, you can utilize Dmarcian’s DMARC Record Generator to quickly create a record to add to your DNS. This will ask you a few questions regarding how you want your DMARC record to be configured, and the policy you choose would be up to preference. For the inbox warming process, however, our suggestion would be to set your policy to “None”.
4. Turn Off Auto Reply For Your Connected Inbox
If you set an inbox with an away message for incoming emails, this can sometimes cause the incoming email you were about to receive to be rejected and bounced back to the sender with a message letting you know that they are away from checking this inbox. For the inbox warming process, this can cause issues with incoming emails being bounced so if you are experiencing issues with your inbox being restricted from receiving incoming emails, we would suggest taking this off during the warming process.
5. Check Your Inboxes Storage Limits
If you have been utilizing an email address for a long time and tend to not delete old emails, it is not uncommon for you to start reaching storage limitations under your given workspace/server. If a mailbox is full or very close to being full, incoming emails will get rejected due to there not being any actual space for this email to be placed.
If you are experiencing issues with receiving emails from our network, it never hurts to check on how much storage space under your account is occupied and delete/remove information where necessary, prioritizing old emails that have file attachments or additional formatting that you no longer require.
If you are still experiencing issues with an inbox not being able to receive mail from our network, and your issue does not fall in line with any of these solutions, please write to our support at Warmup Inbox with your given situation and we will be happy to help.