TABLE OF CONTENTS
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What is an IP address and why Warm Up?
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How to Warm Up Your IP Address
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Newsletter Planning Example
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Best Practices to use before sending and for subsequent submissions
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Conclusions
1. What is an IP address and why Warm Up?
The IP address is a unique string of numbers that identifies the server sending the mail. Your IP address is one of the most important factors that determine your sending reputation.
ISPs (Internet Service Providers) use your IP address to identify you as a sender, monitor your sending behavior, and assign a reputation score to your IP.
A better reputation leads to higher deliverability rates, thus reducing the risk of SPAM.
When you start sending emails with Blendee, you’re assigned an IP address that, having never sent emails on your behalf, doesn’t have a reputation yet. In these situations, we speak of a “cold” IP.
“Warming up” your IP address and thus making it gain reputation is called the Warm Up phase.
The “warm-up” of an IP address dedicated to sending e-mails happens gradually, starting by sending small amounts of e-mails and then increasing these amounts over a given period of time. Doing this allows ISPs to recognize, identify, and evaluate your sending practices before greenlighting your entire mailing list.
The main goal of the Warm Up is to increase the sending volume to the expected “normal” levels.
During the Warm Up period, ISPs evaluate the sending behavior, the quality of the lists and the quality of the content that is sent.
The more engaged those who receive the emails are, the better the reputation of your IP address. In fact, among the factors evaluated by ISPs, we find: the number of users who opened our email, the number of users who scrolled the email and also the number of users who moved our email to other folders.
You will also find that the good reputation you build during the “warm-up” period will be very useful for subsequent submissions. In fact, you won’t have to worry about problems, you can focus more on the acquisition strategy, providing quality content, and tracking results.
2. How to warm up your IP address
The following tips are to be considered simple suggestions, as the frame of reference often changes from sender to sender.
If you need the support of an expert to better organize the Warm UP phase, contact our support.
The number of emails you will send during the Warm Up phase changes according to the total number of emails to be made, but it is always advisable to send an appropriate number of emails and with an appropriate frequency to allow ISPs to track your reputation.
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Many reputation systems only save data for 30 days, which means you won’t have to go 30 days or more without sending emails. If this happens, you will then have to proceed with a new Warm Up
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Very often the tricky part when warming up an IP address is deciding where to start.
First of all, it is advisable to choose an email segment that we want to use for the Warm Up.
ISPs recommend starting with email addresses within your organization, such as employees’ personal Gmail addresses.
This is especially useful if you’re building an entirely new reputation or trying to improve one that isn’t good value.
Some messages for some recipients will likely end up in the SPAM folder. In this case, it is advisable to ask to drag the messages out of SPAM to allow ISPs to recognize your IP.
Obviously, asking your colleagues to do this is different from asking an end customer to do it, so we recommend starting with internal emails.
Once you’ve chosen the segment of users you want to send to, you’ll need to define the type of email you want to send.
In this case, we recommend preparing a newsletter that facilitates a high performance in terms of openings and clicks. In general, the following should not be missing:
- Right proportion between images and written text (it is not a good practice to send emails with only images);
- Offer the recipient personalized and valuable content (e.g.: Hello USERNAME, we have an exclusive discount for you);
- Insert a single Call To Action;
To allow a correct Warm Up, Blendee will automatically speed up the sending times over time.
During the warm-up phase, it’s important to pay close attention to the recipient’s engagement. Verify your content and be honest with yourself. Are your subject lines clear and persuasive? Are you submitting valuable content? If your initial segment doesn’t think so (low number of opens, low number of clicks), your entire list probably won’t either. In this case, it is advisable to consider changing the email.
Warm Up on all ISPs
At this stage, it is vitally important to maintain a steady flow of mailings to all ISPs. Don’t warm up Gmail on Mondays, Yahoo! on Tuesdays, etc.
Otherwise, the sending activity appears sporadic, and you won’t have the chance to build a solid and trustworthy reputation.
3. Newsletter Planning Example
The approach we recommend for planning the first submission is a fairly conservative approach but one that, given our experience, turns out to be the one with the highest success rate.
It involves making a first send on day one to a maximum of 3,000 contacts and making a 30% increase in the following days until it covers the entire user base. If you already have data from previous submissions, we recommend that you segment your user base to start with a more receptive user group.
Below is an example table showing the maximum number of daily submissions that should be made:
Of course, this data can change depending on the size of the user base. For small user bases, it is recommended to start not with 3000 but with a smaller number. For support in this regard, you can contact our technical department by clicking here.
4. Best practices to use before sending and for subsequent submissions
The most important part of the warm-up period is establishing consistent email sending patterns. Here are a few things to consider before you get started:
Starting cautiously is a good idea
It is very difficult to regain a good reputation once it has been lost. Often senders feel the need to be more aggressive and try to speed up the Warm Up period. However, you also need to consider how long it will take to correct your reputation. Since your reputation is tracked every 30 days, it may take 4 or more weeks to regain it, and every day you go without sending with a good reputation comes at a cost.
IP rotation is a very bad idea
You don’t need dozens of IPs to send your mails (at least you shouldn’t need them). If you send different emails with different IPs (known as snowshoeing), ISPs will notice these changes and block not just a single IP address, but the entire range. If you do a proper Warm Up and follow best practices, a single IP address can send millions of emails per day without any problems.
Use data to improve your mailings
Blendee allows you to easily identify the most receptive user segments and thus create more efficient campaigns. ISPs are sensitive to these changes and will facilitate your mailings if they notice that you are paying attention to how your recipients react.
Best Practices will always help you
Monitoring user engagement, personalization, and removal of inactive recipients while Warm Up your IP (practices that you should also use later) is key to maximum deliverability of your newsletters
5. Conclusion
Warming up your IP is a vital part of creating and maintaining a successful email campaign program. While proper IP warm-up may take longer than you’d like (we know you’re busy!), the efforts are really worthwhile.
At Blendee, we work with clients to provide the best strategies and advice to contribute to the success of IP Warm Up. We provide detailed reports broken down by internet service provider that help our customers take an inside look at how their email is received.
Our team provides advice on an ongoing basis or one-time services to help you set up or to help you get back on track.
Further reading:
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