Imagine if your business signed up for an email service and immediately began sending thousands of emails out; it would probably look suspicious to the service provider and you might immediately be flagged as a malicious spammer. In order to gain the trust of the email service provider, you need to gradually work on your sender reputation to show them that you can be trusted to send lots of emails out.
IP warming is the concept of establishing trust between email marketers and internet service providers. It’s a process that slowly builds up your reputation with service providers, and it helps to ensure that your emails won’t be filtered out.
In this post, we’ll be taking a deeper look at the concept of IP warming and why it’s so important to your email marketing campaigns. We’ll take a look at the impact of your IP reputation and the best practices to help you build a good relationship with email service providers.
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What is IP warmup?
IP warmup is the process of gradually building a positive sender reputation for a new IP address. This usually involves sending a couple of emails at first to establish a sense of trust, then gradually increasing volume while maintaining low spam rates.
This is important for newer businesses or companies that have recently switched to a different email service provider. Since IP addresses are unique, it’s important to be assigned a static one that will represent your business. That way all email service providers can correctly identify you, leading to fewer problems with blocked emails and spam filters.
Why it is important to warm up your IP address
Warming up your IP address is important to establish a good relationship with email service providers. By building trust, you improve your email deliverability and can avoid having your emails marked as spam automatically. IP warming also helps you identify email content issues, and it generates a large amount of data that can be used to make informed email marketing decisions in the future.
If you’re interested in sending large volumes of emails on a regular basis to your customers and potential leads, then IP warming is a crucial step to take. It drastically improves your email engagement metrics, gives your email marketing campaign a boost, and raises the chances of business success.
Without IP warming, your emails will likely be caught in a spam filter or blocked completely. This is especially true if you’re trying to send large volumes of emails with a new email service provider. This will reduce your email marketing ROI and could potentially ruin your chances of having a successful email campaign.
What impacts IP reputation
IP reputation is your IP address’s reputation with email service providers. If you have a positive reputation, then your emails are less likely to be filtered out and will almost always reach their intended target. If you have a poor reputation, then there’s a chance that your emails will automatically be blocked or filtered as spam.
Impacts
- The number of emails you send on a regular basis. If you send a large volume of emails without IP warming, then it will likely trigger spam filters and negatively affect your IP reputation.
- The type of content in your emails. Your content may contain spam trigger words or phrases that will automatically flag it as spam. This will lower your IP reputation and your emails could be caught in a spam filter.
- Your email engagement metrics. Low engagement metrics can often lead to a poor IP reputation. If your emails have high bounce rates, high spam rates, and low open rates, then it could flag your emails as spam.
- If you’re blacklisted by other email providers. If you’ve received lots of spam complaints then it’s possible that you could be blacklisted by email providers. This will automatically stop your emails from being sent to certain addresses and will likely destroy your chances of a successful email marketing campaign.
IP warming schedule
In order to build up a reputation with IP service providers, it’s a good idea to use an IP warming schedule. This typically involves sending around 10% of your emails to the most qualified leads or responsive subscribers. Next week, you’ll send a larger percentage (around 15% to 25%) of the emails that you intend to send out. Again, you’ll focus on the next most qualified leads and customers that are likely to engage with your content.
Over the following weeks, you’ll continue to increase your sending volume by around 5% to 10%, prioritizing the subscribers that are most likely to respond or interact with your emails.
IP warming best practises
In order to optimize the IP warming process, it’s a good idea to follow a few proven practices. This will greatly speed up the process so that you can start sending your full email volume as soon as possible.
Best practises
- Create a new email list from scratch. Avoid using older email lists. Build a new one from scratch if you have to start the IP warming process again. This will ensure you’re not sending to invalid email addresses.
- Plan an IP warming schedule. As we’ve already mentioned, it’s worth starting with a small percentage of your full email volume. Send anywhere from 5% to 10% of your full email volume for week 1, then gradually increase this by 5% to 10% each week. Remember to prioritize the most qualified emails that are likely to engage with your content.
- Keep an eye on engagement metrics. Whether it’s open rates or spam complaints, make sure you’re constantly monitoring your engagement metrics. This will help you make informed decisions in the future should you need to change your email marketing approach.
- Always create valuable content. Deliver valuable content through your emails to encourage engagement. This will build a positive sender reputation with both your service provider and your audience.
- Sort your email list by engagement. Since you’ll want to gradually send out more emails as part of the IP warming process, it’s a good idea to sort your email list by engagement levels. This will help you send emails to subscribers that are more likely to engage with your content.
- Consider IP warming on multiple addresses. If you have a large customer base, then it can be worth warming up multiple IP addresses. This will help you spread out your email volume so that you can reach a wider audience.
By following these practices, you can quickly build a positive sender reputation and avoid the possibility of being blacklisted by your email service provider.