The First Stride of Email Deliverability

Just like a warm up consists of a gradual increase in the intensity of physical activity to warm the muscles and reduce the risk of injury, IP warming is the process of systematic addition of campaign volume every week in the new IP address. Doing so will help in establishing a positive sending reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

While it generally takes around 4-8 weeks to accomplish maximum deliverability rate, it could take more time if the mailbox providers see that the recipient does not want the email. Some of the mailbox providers limit the number of emails to be delivered each day before they have not established a credible reputation. Therefore, it is imperative to warm up the new IP and ensure that your emails are delivered in the subscriber’s inbox.

That said, let’s try to get the hang of IP warming and understand how to make the most out of it with 5 easy steps.

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Make sure you follow all the email deliverability best practices before sending the first lot of emails for IP warming.

To ensure an adequate deliverability rate, every email you send from the new IP should be authenticated with DomainKeys Identified Mail.
You must use the new IP to update the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record. Verify that the IP is not set up as an open relay with the help of your Email Service Provider or email administrator. open relay with the help of your Email Service Provider or email administrator.

Your dedicated IP should have a pointer record set up in your reverse DNS (Domain Name System).

In other words, map the host name to your IP addresses with the help of CNAME and A records.

CNAME (Canonical Name) record is used to alias one name to another. For instance: email.uplers.com and www.email.uplers.com point to the same application and are hosted by the same server. In order to make sure that it does not create two different records, A record and CNAME record comes into picture.

An A record is used for email.uplers.com pointing to the server IP address, while CNAME record is used for www.email.uplers.com that points to email.uplers.com. If your IP address changes, you have to update it in one place only. Simply edit the A record for email.uplers.com and the changes will be incorporated automatically. For Outlook.com, include the IP address in Microsoft Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) account.

Segment the email subscribers based on their engagement with your previous emails.

You should start off by sending relevant emails to the most active subscribers.

Choose your segments wisely so that the ISP does not block your IP.

The key to successful IP warming is gradually increasing the number of emails you send.

An acceptable schedule looks something like this:

Week 1	Daily Volume
Day 1	50
Day 2	100
Day 3	200
Day 4	400
Day 5	800
Day 6	2000

Businesses that have more than 5 million subscribers should not send more than double the previous volume.
During the first six weeks, avoid sending to subscribers who have not opened or clicked in the last 90 days.

Carry out the post-send hygiene.

Monitoring the email metrics is of paramount importance so that you can revise the warm up strategy, if needed. Keep a close eye on the delivery rate, bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, and spam rate to measure the success of your campaigns. While warming your IP, it is important to maintain an open rate above 20% at least.

Have your bounce processing in place and remove the unknown users or invalid emails after one bounce. For safe unsubscribes, you must have the List-Unsubscribe header to your email headers.

Some IP Warming Issues
You Shouldn’t Worry About

Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail present some bulking issues by dividing emails into discrete bulks, thereby delaying the email delivery. It will get resolved once you send some emails with positive metrics.
Delays are normal at AOL, Microsoft, and Comcast. These delays or 421 bounces will retry for 72 hours. If it cannot be delivered after that time, they will bounce as a 5XX and the bounce record will be saved as 421 error. Once your reputation develops, there won’t be any further delays.

Summing it up

The difference between a bad warm up and good warm up would look something like this.

Bad Warm UP

Good Warm UP

We strongly recommend that you follow the strategies discussed above to warm up your IP and establish a positive sender reputation across every ISP. It will create the perfect scaffold to impart highly personalized and target experience to your email subscribers, which will ultimately enhance your email marketing performance.