What is IP warming and Why is it important for successful Email Marketing?

Most people are aware of the multiple benefits that a good email marketing campaign can provide their business. But making it happen is not that easy. You must have seen certain emails end up in the spam or junk folders while others land in the inbox. Have you ever wondered why this happens? A lot of this depends on the sender's reputation of the IP address from where the email was sent in the first place. Hence, sender reputation is of utmost importance for running a victorious email marketing campaign.

With so many factors affecting the sender's reputation such as quality of the content, email list health, etc. building a good reputation can be quite a tricky task. Especially, sending email from a brand-new IP address can be one of the largest influencers of your inbox success. Mainly because emails sent from new IPs are generally considered suspicious by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and may choose to not deliver them until they gain a good reputation. But successful email delivery is crucial for successful email marketing. Here is where the process of IP warming can be of great help to you.

Well, you must have not heard this term in general conversations, but if you are a business owner planning to incorporate email marketing as one of your marketing strategies then you must get familiar with it.

In this post, we will show you the importance of this process to build your reputation and thus lead to successful email marketing by improving the deliverability of your emails. But let us first begin with understanding what is IP warming in detail.

What is IP warming?

IP warming is the way to establish a positive reputation with the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for a new IP or the IP that has not been in use for some time. It involves sending regular emails starting with small volumes and gradually increasing the volume or the number of emails sent over a period of time using a single IP address.

The goal is to create an identity and gain the Internet Service Provider’s trust to increase the chances of getting the emails delivered into the subscriber’s inboxes.

Why is IP warming important for Email Marketing?

For successful email marketing, successful email delivery is necessary. You cannot just jump into an email marketing campaign with an email address. You will need a solid email marketing strategy for starting an email marketing campaign and warming up an IP is a part of it.

As we have already discussed above regardless of which email platform you use, you need to be sending emails from an IP address that has a good reputation for the best email deliverability.

When you first start sending an email from a new IP address the Internet Service Providers are suspicious about it. So, they put this IP and sending domain under high scrutiny to check whether the emails from this particular IP are spam or not.

The process of IP warming gives ISPs (Internet Service Providers) enough time to recognize, evaluate, and adjust their sending practices. They carefully examine all the indicators of the reputation such as sending volume, sending frequency, and bounce rates from these email campaigns. They also look at how willing you are to send relevant information to responsive users, how many users opened your email, replied to you, or deleted your messages without opening them.

Eventually, the warm-up period allows the Internet Service Providers to gain trust in you as a sender. Additionally, they can also identify any suspicious activity on your IP address by learning your usual sending volumes.

Whereas, on the other hand, even you can use this warm-up period to your advantage. As this process begins with sending emails in small volumes, you have the opportunity to find out and fix any deliverability issues before you start sending big volumes. You can also check your deliverability rates by campaign, domain, day, time, etc., and adjust accordingly. Moreover, during this process, you get a perfect time to evaluate your content and determine which emails are generating the most response. This will allow you to deliver winning messages to your subscriber database once your IP is warmed up.

Conclusively, the process of IP warming provides you (sender) a great opportunity to test and optimize your entire email campaign during the whole process. And the good reputation that you built during this period will make your life much easier when it comes to email marketing. You will be able to focus more closely on your business instead of fixing deliverability issues.

If you fail to warm up your IP, you will never be able to flex your email marketing muscles and reach your full potential. Hence your emails will be more likely to land in the spam folder or bounce.

Naturally, this process takes time and requires a lot of patience but it is worth it. Once you gain a solid reputation, you will be able to send out much larger and more regular emails without the Internet Service Providers getting in the way.

Before starting with the process consider the following IP warming best practices by Digital Marketing experts to avoid your email delivery being significantly throttled or your IP being blacklisted.

· Put your authentication records in place (SPF and DKIM) because it can significantly damage your IP warming efforts if they are not in place then.

· Segment your data and use your most active and engaged subscribers as it is one of the factors that influence your sender's reputation.

· As already discussed above, start your IP warming process by sending small volumes of emails. Then gradually increase the number of emails sent day by day. Because Internet Service Providers are mostly skeptical when they detect abrupt high-volume email campaigns. Hence, you should start small volumes, gradually scaling towards the volume of emails you intend to send. Make sure to set a schedule and stick to it.

· Be sure that you create highly engaging content that maximizes the likelihood that users will click, open, and engage with your emails. The content you create should strengthen your relationship with your subscribers. The more interactive is your content, the better it is. You need to show the Internet Service Providers that the content you create is the content that your users want.

· Always prefer well-targeted emails when you are warming up your IPs.

· Rather than sending a huge volume of emails at a single specific time distribute your email across a day or several days. You can use an email marketing tool that can help you automatically spread your emails sent across a longer timeframe.

· Check your email list weekly and make sure that it is clean and does not have any old or unverified emails.

· Regularly monitor your sender's reputation during the IP warming process. Some of the metrics that you should be watching during this period are bounce rate, spam reports, click rate, and open rate. If the bounce rate of any of your campaigns is above 3 to 5%, then you should evaluate the cleanliness of your list. Additionally, you should stop emailing unengaged or dormant email addresses. The same goes for the click rate and open rate. Moreover, if any of your campaigns is reported as spam at a rate of more than 0.08% then check whether the content you are sending is relevant, targeted to an interested audience, and is appropriately worded according to their interests.

· If you note a major problem on a specific day, check your Internet Providers Reporting on the same day.

· Check whether you have problems with your deployment infrastructure. It may happen that someone has accidentally changed a setting that caused the authentication to fail.

· Be consistent with your sending emails even after your IP is warmed up because IPs can cool down if volume stops or significantly decreases for more than a few days.

· Analyze the email address that you are sending to in a later stage of your IP warming process, whether they are still fresh and active.

Conclusion

Warming up your new IP or an IP that has not been in use for some time is an essential part of creating successful email marketing. When you get a new IP address, it does not have a reputation score or a sender history, so Internet Service Providers are suspicious about it. They decide whether to deliver your email to the inbox or spam folder based on your sending behavior. So, warming up your IP address properly to build a good reputation with Internet Service Providers is necessary to land your emails in the inbox. Ultimately, enhancing your email marketing performance.

Though this process may seem daunting and time-consuming, especially if you are doing it for the first time, the efforts are worth it. You can also reach out to email marketing service providers for help. Finally, as a digital marketing Jacksonville firm, we would strongly recommend you to follow the best practices mentioned above to ensure the success of this process.