IP Warm-up Strategy Overview

What is IP Warm-up Strategy?

IP warming is the process of methodically adding email volume to a new IP address gradually over several days and weeks in order to establish a positive sending reputation with mailbox providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc).

Advantages of IP Warm-up gradually

Quick Warm-Up	Slow Warm-Up
Mailbox providers see volume spikes.	Mailbox providers see the gradual build in volume.
Unknown Senders.	Good reputation develops over time.
Blocks/Filtering/Rate Limiting.	Blocks/Filtering/Rate Limiting rarely occurs (only occurs when engagement and complaint rates are low).

Mailbox providers view email from a new IP address as suspicious until they establish a positive sending reputation. It takes 4-8 weeks to achieve maximum deliverability (depending on targeted volume and engagement).

Warming could take longer if mailbox providers don’t perceive that the email is wanted by the recipient (i.e., recipient has signed up explicitly). Certain mailbox providers limit senders to thresholds - number of messages delivered per day - until they establish a reputation.

Best Strategy and Key to Success

MDirector helps each client with a personalized IP Warm-up Plan, depending on strategy, type of client, the database volume, frequency, other factors.

However, there are general aspects that any company can apply and that we recommend following:

1. Start off with your best performing messages: those to highly engaged recipients.

Focus warming your most engaged subscribers and then add in the older segments as you progress. The goal during your the warm-up process is to send to subscribers who are least likely to complain and bounce. This would include those that have opted-in most recently and are consistent openers/clickers.

2. Segmentation strategy

Segmentation of the database. Older segments should be added to the engaged segments in chunks of 15% of your existing volume as not to tip your reputation from good to bad.

3. Consistency and coherence

You must be consistent with volume and with the frequency. Avoid those email addresses that generate complaints and hard bounces. In relation to bounces, MDirector platform removes hard bounced emails automatically. If you carry out this practice efficiently, you will establish a positive sending reputation quickly. If you send infrequently (less than once a week), it will take longer to build a positive reputation.

4. Value contribution: Quality before quantity

The contents of your emails are very important to achieve a good engagement with your subscribers. Mailbox providers track how engaged subscribers are with an email and its sender, and they track the nature of such engagement.

• Positive actions: opening a message, adding an email address to the contact list as a trusted sender, clicking links, clicking to enable images, reading speed, how the subscribers scroll by the email message, among other factors.
• Negative actions: subscribers report an email as spam and delete it, move it to the spam folder, or ignore it.

5. Measures outcomes

Monitor metrics periodically and adjust the plan accordingly during the IP Warm-up process in case of anomalies along the way.

Successful IP Warm-up Plan

• During weeks 1-2: send to your most active subscribers - those who have opened/clicked in the past 30 days.
• During weeks 3-4: you can expand to subscribers who have opened/clicked in the past 60 days.
• During the first 6 weeks: do NOT send to subscribers who have not opened or clicked in the past 90 days.