IP warming is a new beginning. It's a chance to boost productivity, cut expenses, and reach inboxes. There are various reasons why email marketers do it, but there is only one way to do it well.

When you're sending in large amounts of data, diversifying your IP range might be helpful. There are several reasons to do it, including (but not limited to) the following:

They are protecting different IPs from the negative impact of low-engagement consumers on deliverability.

Migrating to a different SMTP relay owing to a better deal/email platform optional behaviours/actions that wice you duplicate your camera capabilities

However, you can't just start delivering large amounts of data right once; your IP must first 'warm-up.' ISPs are likely to reject your IP if you don't warm it up.

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What Is IP Warming and How Does It Affect You?

The method of getting email mailbox providers acclimated to receiving messages from your dedicated IP addresses is known as IP Warming. It's an essential aspect of email sending with any Email Service Provider, and it's a standard procedure at Braze to guarantee your messages regularly reach their intended inboxes.

IP Warming is intended to assist you in establishing an excellent reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) (Internet Service Providers). When a new IP address is used to send an email, ISPs check it programmatically to ensure it isn't being used to send spam to subscribers.

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What happens if I don't have time to warm up IP addresses?

Warming the IP address is necessary. If you don't correctly warm IPs and your email pattern raises suspicion, one or more of the following things might happen:

Your email delivery speed may have been drastically slowed or throttled.

When there is a suspicion of spam, ISPs limit email delivery to safeguard their customers. For example, if you send an email to 100,000 people, your ISP may only deliver it to 5000 of them in the first hour. The ISP then tracks engagement metrics, including open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and spam complaints. 

If a large number of spam reports are received, they may decide to send the rest of the message to the trash folder rather than sending it to the user's inbox. If your email has a reasonable level of engagement, they may continue to throttle it to collect more engagement data to assess whether or not it is spam with more confidence.

If the email has a high level of interaction, they may decide not to limit it. They utilize that information to build an email reputation, eventually influencing whether or not your emails are automatically classified as spam.

ISPs may ban your domain and IP address, so all of your emails will be sent to your users' spam folders.

IP warming best practices

All of these disadvantages may be avoided if you follow the suggestions below:

Begin by sending tiny amounts of email and progressively increase the quantity you send each day. ISPs are the most sceptical about large-scale, high-volume email campaigns. As a result, you should start by sending tiny amounts of emails and progressively increase the number of emails you send in the future. To be safe, regardless of volume, we recommend warming up your IP. For further information, see the timetable below.

Make sure your initial piece of content is fascinating and increases the chances of users clicking, opening, and engaging with your email. When warming IPs, well-targeted emails are always preferable to indiscriminate blasts.

While warming up your IP, keep an eye on your Sender's Reputation. During the warming period, keep an eye on the following metrics: Bounce Rates: If more than 3-5 per cent of your campaigns bounce, you should assess the cleanliness of your list using the criteria in our article. 

Keep It Clean: The Importance of Email List Hygiene. Reports of Spam: If more than 0.08 per cent of your campaigns are reported as spam, you should reconsider the information you're delivering, make sure it's targeted to an interested audience, and make sure your emails are correctly crafted to spark their interest. It would help if you also considered adopting a Sunset Policy to cease sending emails to unresponsive or defunct email accounts.

Note

To warm your IPs, Alore advises against utilizing Intelligent Timing. Braze won't have enough information about your users to calculate an appropriate send time because IP warming campaigns are among the first campaigns you send. In this instance, all Intelligent Timing messages will default to the fallback time and be sent simultaneously.

Warming schedules for IP

To guarantee deliverability, we strongly advise sticking to this IP warming schedule. It's also crucial not to skip days since constant scaling enhances deliverability. Once you've finished warming up and attained your goal daily volume, try to keep it up daily. 

While some volatility is OK, attaining the target volume and then only sending a bulk blast once a week may harm your deliverability and reputation as a sender. Finally, most ISPs only save data on the importance for 30 days. If you don't send for a month, you'll have to start with the IP warming procedure.

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How can we keep sendings to a minimum as the world warms?

The built-in user limitation mechanism in Alore is a handy tool for warming up your IP address. Select the Advanced Options menu on the Target Users step after picking your preferred messaging segments during campaign development to limit your users.

You may progressively increase this restriction as your warming schedule progresses, allowing you to send more emails.

Segmentation of subdomains

Many ISPs and email service providers no longer censor IP addresses solely based on reputation. Domain-based reputation is now taken into consideration by these screening systems. This implies that filters will look at any data linked with the sender's domain instead of only looking at the IP address. 

As a result, we advocate having distinct domains or subdomains for marketing, transactional, and corporate mail, in addition to warming up your email IP. We support segmenting your environments so that corporate mail is delivered via your top-level domain, and marketing and transactional mail is routed via other domains or subdomains.

Important

Subdomain segmentation is particularly crucial for high-volume senders. To guarantee that they follow this strategy, these senders should engage with a Braze representative when setting up their accounts.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that IP warming is a marathon, not a sprint. While the procedure may appear tedious and time-consuming, trying to rehabilitate a reputation that has been tarnished due to failing to follow tried and tested email best practices would be more difficult. 

The higher your reputation ratings with ISPs and the better your sending methods are, the more likely your emails will be delivered. Warming and ramping up your IP address and following best practices for letter design will aid in inbox delivery optimization.

Our worldwide deliverability team is your partner in this process and will assist you in positioning yourself for success throughout the IP warming phase.