What Is Inbox Rotation? (And How To Use It)

Inbox rotation is a method used by sales professionals to scale their cold email outreach.

The reason why you need to use inbox rotation is because your cold emails will go to spam if you don’t (assuming you are sending a high volume of emails).

You shouldn’t send more than 40 cold emails per day per email account if you want to avoid spam. Due to this inconvenient fact, you’ll need to implement inbox rotation into your cold email outreach campaigns if you want to land in the primary inbox.

In this article, I will explain how inbox rotation works, and how you can use it:

- What is inbox rotation?
- How does inbox rotation work?
- How to implement inbox rotation
- Final thoughts

What is inbox rotation?

Inbox rotation is a method used by salespeople to scale their cold email sending volume.

The reason why inbox rotation became popular in recent years is because email service providers began cracking down on people that were sending a high volume of cold emails from a single email account.

Long gone are the days where you could send 100+ cold emails per day from a single email account.

I recommend that you only send 40 cold emails max per day per email account. If you send more than this, then you risk going to spam, since email service providers consider high sending volume to be spammy (especially for new email accounts and domains).

Fortunately, there is a solution (inbox rotation). You can connect multiple sender email accounts to a single campaign, and distribute the sending volume amongst all of the connected sender email accounts.

For example, if we say that you should only send 40 cold emails per day per email account, then the way that you would send more is by connecting more email accounts.

If you want to send 400 cold emails per day, then you would need to connect 10 sender email accounts to your campaign, each sending 40 per day; this would add up to 400 emails sent per day.

You can scale your cold email outreach infinitely, the only limiting factor is the number of sender email accounts that you have connected.

If you are wondering why you can’t just use an SMTP provider or newsletter software to blast out thousands of emails each day, then I recommend that you read my article What Is The Best Way To Send Cold Emails?

In this article, I explain why cold email is very different to other types of email, and why you shouldn’t use softwares like SendGrid or Mailchimp.

How does inbox rotation work?

Inbox rotation works by distributing your email sending volume amongst multiple email accounts.

As mentioned above, I recommend that you only send 40 cold emails max per day per email account to avoid going to spam.

If you want to send 400 cold emails per day (for example), then you would need to connect 10 sender email accounts to your campaign (each sending 40 emails per day).

Inbox rotation will then rotate the sending amongst your connected sender email accounts, so that no one email account sends too many emails.

The reason why some people want to send such a high volume of cold emails is because they may have a large lead list. If you have 5,000 relevant leads that you want to reach out to, but you are only sending from one email account (40 emails max per day), then it would take you 125 days to email all 5,000 leads.

This is why inbox rotation is so important, because it allows you to email more people each day, shortening the time it takes to email all of the leads in your campaign.

If you are sending a low volume of cold emails, then inbox rotation doesn’t matter.

I recommend that you create just one email account per domain, meaning that you would need to buy 10 domains to achieve the above (400 emails per day).

A lot of people in the cold email community say that you can create multiple sender email accounts on a single domain, but I disagree. The more email accounts that you have on a single domain, the higher your overall sending volume will be on that domain, which increases the likelihood of going to spam.

It’s best to play it safe, and view your sender email accounts and domains as long term assets. You don’t want to “burn” (blacklist) your email accounts because you were too cheap to spend an extra $10 per month on additional email accounts.

Below is an example of how it would look to have 10 sender email accounts on 10 different domains:
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)
[email protected] (40 emails per day)

Inbox rotation allows you to increase your sending volume, without negatively affecting your deliverability. There is no limit to the number of sender email accounts that you can connect to a campaign.

It’s important to understand that you should never send cold emails from your primary domain. You can learn more about this in my article Should You Send Cold Emails From Your Primary Domain?

How to implement inbox rotation

The only way to implement inbox rotation is by using a specialized cold email software (like Emailchaser).

There is no practical way of implementing inbox rotation without the use of a tool like Emailchaser, since trying to manually send emails from multiple different email accounts in a way that looks natural isn’t possible/realistic.

Emailchaser has inbox rotation built-in by default, and allows you to connect an unlimited number of sender email accounts.

When you create a campaign inside of Emailchaser, you can connect your sender email accounts to it. You can then upload your leads to your campaign, and once you launch it, Emailchaser will automatically send emails from your connected email accounts using inbox rotation.

We built Emailchaser to send emails in a natural looking way. For example, there is a 5 to 10 minute delay (randomized) between each email that is sent from each email account. Additionally, Emailchaser spreads sending throughout the day and also gradually builds up sending volume.

All of these things help prevent your emails from going to spam. If you want to learn more about how Emailchaser prevents your emails from going to spam, then check out my article 10 Ways That Emailchaser Prevents Your Cold Emails From Going To Spam.

Frequently asked questions

Final thoughts

Inbox rotation allows you to scale your cold email outreach without negatively impacting your deliverability.

I recommend that you use Emailchaser to send your cold emails because inbox rotation is built-in by default.

If you want to learn how to send cold emails, then check out my article How To Send Cold Emails Without Landing In Spam - Beginner’s Guide.