Do I need to warm up and verify emails prior to my first send with Letterhead?

No. All customers can start sending without warming up their lists — Letterhead sends from already-warm IP pools, so deliverability should be good from your very first send.

What happens on your first send

Letterhead does not automatically check every address before it sends. That’s a separate paid feature, Recipient Validation, which your Account Manager can turn on for you. It validates addresses added by import, embed form, or archive signup as a daily background job — it doesn’t run at the moment you send.

Without Recipient Validation, if your list has many dead emails you may see a high bounce count in your first newsletter’s metrics, and those bounces can affect your sender reputation. It’s worth using one of the cautious strategies below for a list you’re unsure about.

Two caveats:

• Even with Recipient Validation on, it doesn’t confirm that a person deliberately opted in — only that the address itself is real. If you’re unsure about consent, make your first send a re-opt-in email so recipients can easily unsubscribe.
• There’s no way to manually trigger a check of your list inside Letterhead before a send — Recipient Validation (if enabled) runs on its own schedule, not on demand.

Optional: a cautious warm-up strategy

If you suspect a high number of dead addresses, you can ramp up gradually — for example, daily sends of 10k, then 20k the following week, then 50k, until you reach your full list.

Optional: the pending opt-in approach

1. Import your subscribers with a Pending tag.
2. Create a segment — e.g. “Pending-Opt-in” — of subscribers with that tag.
3. Make your first send a re-opt-in email to that segment only, letting readers know they’re subscribed and can unsubscribe if they no longer want the email. Send it from your new Letterhead account so it comes from your new sending address.

Related

• Understanding bounces
• Working in Audience