What is Warmup process and how to do it?

What is warm-up process ?

• Warmup process is a name given to the process to build a good reputation for IP address.
• This Process involves sending regular but small campaigns over a period of time & gradually increasing the volume of emails as ISP’s begin to form a positive reputation for the IP address.
• Once you have warmed up your IP address successfully, you can send out much higher email volume & get it through the ISP’s filter effective.
• If you are using EasySendy Pro, then there is need to warmup the IP address of your email relay delivery server, like Amazon SES, Mandrill, SendGrid, Sparkpost, Leadersend, Elasticemail and MailGun.

Why it is needed to Warm up the IP?

• Certainly, it seems easier to send all your normal traffic over a new IP. Ramping up of cold IP will require some changes to your sending schedule, but mostly it’s a minor inconvenience.
• IP warming is only needed if you are using your own dedicated IP address to send out emails campaigns.
• If we’re sending less than 10,000 emails per month then it is unlikely that ISP’s will be concerned with your deliverability and therefore IP warming is necessary. If too much volume is sent too quickly, than many of the ISP’s will get concerned & the mail server will be compromised, and they will most probably route the messages to the spam folder instead of Inbox.

How to do Warmup Process?

• First check whether warm up of your IP is required or not, incase of shared ip address, like for Amazon SES, Sparkpost, slight warmup is required if you are observing low email open rate.
• After that, ensure your Email List is strong enough i.e no purchased lists or emails from people who have not opted in.
• Split your list into smaller Segments. This will help in staying under your locating devices until you make a good sender score.
• Make sure that SPF record for your sending domain name is appropriately verified.
• Send emails to the most active customers first. This helps in having less Email bounce and more expected to open your messages, both of which are more essential for warming up IP address.
• The key to warm up the IP address is to spread out initial sends over a multiple days. For example, If you plan on sending 40,000 emails a week, you recommend that you split your lists into at least four sublists with limit of no more than 10,000 recipients in each list. Email only one subscriber lists per day over the first few days.
• A good rule of thumb for larger ramp-ups is to start your sending at 10,000 prospects per day. Assuming your bounce rate stays below 0.5% and your spam complaint rate stays below 0.1% on those sends, you can safely double your sending per day over the next few weeks until your intended sending volume is reached.

IP Allocation and IP Warm-up Schedule

The warm-up schedule depends on the sending domain reputation, bounce reports, Spam marked, list age, list hygiene, user engagements, contents and domain distribution.
If you research over many internet sites, you will find the general warm-up schedule which is only applicable if you are  perfect with your sending domain reputation, Spam and bounce report, and list age. Which are generally not applicable for everyone. Here I am going to share the warm-up schedule for all factor of email reputation.

General Warm-up schedule
If your domain reputation is very good and your subscriber list is opt-in means there is only 1% bounce report and 0.1 Spam score, you can use this warm-up schedule.

New Sending Domain/Low reputation sending domain Warm-up schedule

If your domain reputation is low or you have new sending domain and your subscriber list is opt-in means there is only 1% bounce report and 0.1 Spam score, you can use this warm-up schedule.