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Warming Up your Email Account

Heather
  • Updated
IP warming is the practice of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent via a dedicated IP address according to a predetermined schedule. This gradual process – with an increasing number of emails sent daily, for a period of 30 days – helps to establish a reputation with inbox providers as a legitimate email sender.
 
IP warm-up should only be done with the guidance of an Optimove email specialist.

When an inbox provider (e.g. Gmail, Outlook) observes emails coming from a new (“cold”) IP address or an unfamiliar domain, they take notice and immediately begin evaluating the traffic coming from that IP address. Since inbox providers treat email volume as a key determining factor when detecting spam, it is best to begin sending a low to moderate volume, eventually working your way up to larger volumes. This gives the receiving email providers a chance to observe your sending habits and record how your recipients are engaging with your emails.
 
Email uses a dedicated mail server IP address for each Email account. Because many spam detection systems assign a reputation ranking to each individual mail server IP address, when a new Email account begins sending an email, spam systems may treat emails coming from it as initially suspect. Performing the warm-up process for each new mail server IP address attempts to avoid the rejection of your emails by your customers’ email systems. By the end of the warm-up period, you will be able to send customer emails freely.
 

Warm-up Best Practices

The following are the best practices for creating a successful warm-up plan for your Email account(s):

  1. Gradually send an increasing number of real customer emails over a period of 30 days, increasing the volume of emails by a maximum of 150% from one day to the next.
  2. When creating IP warm-up target groups, start by selecting your more active and engaged customers – to ensure the highest probability of opens and clicks, and the lowest probability of customers marking your emails as spam. For example, you could initially send emails to target groups of Active customers with low values for customer attributes such as “Days Since Last Opened” and “Days Since Last Clicked.”
  3. Avoid including common spam trigger words and phishing phrases in the subject and body of your customer emails (you can find one list of such words to avoid here).
  4. Use a spam checker before sending a new email template (IsNotSpam.com is one such free online spam checker).

These precautions will help ensure that the warm-up plan’s maximum number of daily emails is not exceeded and that customers targeted during this period are less likely to unsubscribe and/or report your emails as spam.

 

Syncing Unsubscribes During the Warm-up Period

If you plan on continuing to send customer emails from your previous email system during the warm-up period, it is important to promptly update any customer unsubscribe requests across both systems. Discuss this with your CSM to ensure that all unsubscribe requests are honored during the 30-day warm-up period. After this period, you will exclusively use Email to send customer marketing campaigns, so this will only be a temporary issue.

Please note:

For uploading your list of historic suppression contacts in the Settings area (for example, hard bounces and unsubscribes), you must complete this process 2 days before the IP warm-up. This is because the IP Warm-Up relies on the batch data process. If the list is uploaded too late, the warm-up process will be delayed. 

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