What is IP warming? It’s a process to establish a positive reputation for a new or previously dormant IP address, by gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from that IP address.
What do we want to achieve? The objectives are:
Enhance our email deliverability rates
Improve engagement with our recipients
Reduce the risk of our emails being marked as spam
How should we structure our IPs? Many ISPs and email access providers no longer only filter by IP address reputation. For this reason, in addition to warming up your email IP, we also recommend having separate domains or subdomains for marketing, transactional, and corporate mail.
Documentation for IP Warming and Sending Schedule
Confirm that your first content is highly engaging and maximizes the likelihood that users click, open, and engage with your email. Always prefer well-targeted emails to indiscriminate blasts when warming IPs.
Increase gradually the volumes sent by day
Once you start IP warming, monitor the performances through these metrics:
Spam Rate < 0.08%
Bounce Rate < 3%
Engagement metrics (open rate, CTO)
Braze: https://www.braze.com/docs/user_guide/message_building_by_channel/email/email_setup/ip_warming/#ip-warming-schedules
Most ISPs only store reputation data for 30 days. If you go a month without sending any messages, you’ll have to repeat the IP warming process.
Moreover, erratic sending patterns or sending irrelevant content can negatively impact your sender reputation.
Action Items to warm up IP
- Import database of reachable users
Note:
Unless we are importing the full database (and the history of the users) the database used for IP warming can be erased afterwards, therefore we just need a real email address + set up user aliases
The emails can’t be send if we don’t have email addresses uploaded
- FZ to provide copy for the email
- RBI to set up IP warming email template
- Set up daily IP warming emails, following the recommended volumes: https://www.braze.com/docs/user_guide/message_building_by_channel/email/email_setup/ip_warming/#ip-warming-schedules
- Connect with Rebecca (rebecca.french@braze.com) for deliverability report
How to create the daily IP warming email:
Duplicate the existing template
Rename adding the corresponding day (duplicated +1)
Change the date, under “Schedule Delivery” for the next day
Under target audience, add filters to exclude people who already received the campaign in ALL the previous days
Use “Received Campaign" and change from "has" to "has not"
Limit the number of people receiving (based on the corresponding day of the IP warming schedule)
Review the summary and launch campaign