Your emails may be landing in the spam folder, right?

| Don’t worry, It’s OK.

It is normal for emails to go to the spam folders for newbies in Email marketing by using a new SMTP Mail server with a new domain and IP.

In this tutorial, I will show you How to Warm Up SMTP Server IP quickly and easily.

However, even if you have set all the technical components like, 

DMARCRDNSSPFDKIMNo Blacklists, and have a 10/10 Score from Mail-Tester.com.

There are still chances that your email may be discarded in the spam box.

How to Warm Up SMTP Server IP – Improve Reputation and Deliverability
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 9

However, if you are using a new SMTP Server with a new IP Address or signing up for an SMTP Service like Amazon SES with a dedicated IP address.

Then, you must warm up your IP Address before sending any email marketing campaigns.

Additionally, it is necessary to warm up your IP Address if you have left your IP and didn’t send an email for 30 days or more.

So, SMTP Warm up is an ongoing process.

Raed here if you are interested to know about the best Email Marketing Services.

Now let’s dive into the topic.

What is an IP Warm up?

When you’re using a new server IP, this IP isn’t reliable yet on the Internet, and it is likely that the ISP (Internet Service Provider) does not know about the brand new IP. 

Learn Here What Is Email Warm Up.

Thus, IP Warmup is the process of making Your Reputation on the Internet by slowly increasing the number of emails sent using your IP address based on the predetermined timeframe.

What is an IP Warm Up?
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 10

When Internet Service Providers detect that an email is coming from a brand new IP address, they immediately begin to analyze the traffic of that IP.  

Because ISPs consider email volume an important factor in determining whether they are spam or not.

So, it’s ideal to start with a small number of emails and then make your efforts to reach more substantial volumes.

This allows email service providers the opportunity to observe and evaluate your email sending habits, and the volume and track how your recipients respond to your emails.

Read Also: What is Email Validation? – Reduce Bounce Rate By 50%

The general rule is that the warming up process of an IP can take between 2 to 10 weeks, depending on your situation and the number of emails you plan to send each day. 

But, before you say that it is too boring read The Importance Of Email In Business and Everything You Need To Know.

How Do ISPs Evaluate Your Reputation and Emails?

Once you knew how to warm up an SMTP Server IP address and started the warming up process, Internet Service Providers will evaluate your sending Reputation based on 4 main factors:

1. Bounce Rate

When you launch email marketing campaigns, it is important to ensure that the email list you have is valid; cuz a high bounce rate will damage your sender reputation score.  

2. Spam traps

Having even the least percentage of spam traps may lead to blocklist you.

3. Spammy content

The content of your email is important. Because ISPs will verify whether you’re using spammy keywords or blocklisted or broken links.  

4. User interaction

The way recipients interact with your emails is very important. If they report your email as spam, then this will lead to a real issue!

Take a look here at the 10 Best Email Warm up Tools to Increase Your Inbox Reputation.

How to Warm Up SMTP Server IP in Action (Examples)

Now, let’s look at some fundamental techniques to understand the warming up process if you got the idea of warming up an IP address.

Note: These examples are only a guideline and each sender will be different. As well as always be sure to validate your email lists.

1K Emails per day

You need to begin to send 20 emails on the first day and then gradually increase until you reach 1K within 7-10 days.

Use this warm up schedule table to understand how to maintain warm up process:

Read Also: 11 Email Marketing Skills That You Need To Succeed in 2022

Warmup DayEmails To Send
120
250
3100
4300
5500
6700
7900
81,000
1K Emails per day Example

10K Emails Per Day

In this case, you have to do the same thing, but with a longer time frame.

Warmup Day Emails To Send
120
250
3100
4300
5800
61,200
71,800
82,200
93,500
105,000
116,500
127,500
139,000
1410,000
10K Emails per day Example

50K Emails Per Day

Currently, 50K emails per day are considered to be a big number.

I suggest you make the process easier for yourself and always divide large volume warmup campaigns into small portions.

So, in this case, I divided the IP warmup schedule into three parts:

  1. 10K emails.
  2. 30K emails.
  3. 50K emails.

However, it is possible to say that this would delay the Warm up process and take more time.

But, I have found that in this way, you can track and manage your warm up campaigns accurately and achieve more effective outcomes.

Or in other words, If you warm up to less number of emails you can monitor and observe the interaction with users and bounce rate.

So, this will assist you to understand better and make everything more transparent. I hope It was clear and you all got the point.

Email Volume and Timeline

The warm up timetable and sending volume differ between all senders in IP Warmup.

How many emails you send will depend on the total volume of emails. Some people might require 100 emails per day, while others might need to send 1 million emails per day.

But in any way, you should always send your emails with sufficient frequency to ensure that you can monitor bounces and reputation.

Email Volume and Timeline
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 11

Note: However, this is very important to know that the majority of reputation systems keep information for 30 days.

So, you have to start sending emails from that IP in those 30 days. otherwise, you’ll have to start warming up once again.

That’s the reason I said IP warmup is a continual procedure.

Marketing VS Transaction Emails

Transactional Email

If you would like to use the SMTP mail server for sending transactional emails such as:

  • Invoices,
  • Welcome Emails, or
  • Password resets.

In this case, either you are a brand new business or an established one.

New businesses

Usually, your company’s organic growth will produce an ideal rise in its own way.

Since transactional email is typically determined by the number of customers you have.

So, the expansion of your client base will produce a lovely smooth growth curve for the volume of emails you send.

In this case, you don’t have to stress too much about the IP warmup.

However, it’s still vital to keep an eye on your reputation systems to assess how it’s doing.

Established businesses

If you send lots of emails and decide to move to the other email service providers to start with a dedicated IP address or create your own SMTP.

Then, you have to migrate a smaller amount of emails each time.

One way to accomplish this is to divide your traffic and move small sections of that traffic over to the new IP address as time passes.

However, if you already maintaining multiple mail servers, you may have to change your servers to the dedicated IP addresses each at a time.

Email Marketing Campaigns

The most straightforward method is to calculate your monthly email volume and then divide this number into 30 days.

Then, you should try to divide your emails equally over the 30 days.

For instance,

If you want to send 60,000 emails per month, you must begin with a daily rate of 2,000 over the first month and later.

Maintain Warm up across all ISPs

It is important to keep in mind that you need to maintain a constant sending volume throughout your own total email volume for every ISP.

Make sure to maintain your warm up schedule longer so that each ISP receives the same amount of mail every day.

But, don’t begin to warm up the Gmail on Tuesday, Yahoo on Monday, etc. 

How to maintain IP warm up across All ISPs
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 12

Equally, divide your email among each ISP during each day of warmup.

Otherwise, your activity appears to be irregular, and you’ll not be able to establish a good reputation.

Note: Mix all ISPs, don’t just send to only one at each time.

Tips For How to Warm Up a Server IP Address

The following tips are essential guidelines you must follow while IP warmup:

Tips For IP Warm Up
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 13
  • Don’t begin until you’ve achieved a high sending score: This can be achieved with the help of rDNS, DKIM, SPF, and other technical information.
  • Never send promotional emails during the initial IP warmup stage. And you should send transactional emails or perhaps valuable information if you want the best percentage of engagement.
  • Initially, send only to the subscribers who are active and make sure you have the minimum bounce rates.
  • Don’t change or rotate the IP during warmup. Because rotation could be a sign of spamming.
  • Put an easy link within your email messages that allow recipients to unsubscribe.
  • The addition of an email signature will make your email look trustworthy.
  • Merge your email campaign with the premium SMTP services. As it will improve the user experience and results in a higher domain reputation.
  • Join newsletters. And it will allow a number of emails to appear in your inbox and improve your domain reputation.
  • Send emails to your friend’s list and request to mark your email as non-spam and ask for their reply.
  • Make every effort to establish an audience and then start warming up with your audience. In this way, you’ll get the highest level of interaction from your users and facilitate the “warming up procedure“.
  • Be sure to monitor your email campaigns in detail, and maintain a bounce rate of less than 2% by validating your email lists.

How to Warm Up an IP Adress – Monitor IP Reputation

You will have to track your Bounce rate, reputation score, and user feedback.  

Some services like Sparkpost and Amazon SES include a reputation system that displays your user interaction and bounce rate.  

How to Monitor IP Reputation?
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 14

However, you’ll be able to track your user feedback and bounce rates if you’re using your own SMTP or any other SMTP server by email marketing applications like MailWizz.

You can also track open rates and unsubscribed users. As it will give you an insight into the way users interact with your emails.

Monitor Reputation

The right tools to assess your IP reputation are the first step to success. So, these are some tools and resources that you can use:

Monitor Reputation
How To Warm Up SMTP Server IP: Skyrocket Your IP Reputation 15

Senderscore.org 

The score is ranked between 0 and 100, and it will show you how is your performance. Typically it’s suggested that you keep your sender score at 90 or higher.

Senderbase.com

It will tell you how network providers cisco manages to examine and manage your reputation, and the rating of their reputation is based on Poor, Neutral and Good.

Postmaster.live.com

Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Service gives you information about the traffic coming through your Internet Protocol, like the number of emails sent, the spam traps, and complaint rates hits.   

Postmaster.google.com

It Provides access to the information for your domains in the Google Search Console.

Postmaster.aol.com 

Reviews your IP and email reputation and rate your IP’s reputation in the categories of “good,” “neutral,” or “bad.”

Conclusion

IP warmup refers to the term to send emails slowly to establish a positive email reputation and make the emails land in the recipient’s inboxes.

So, be careful and follow the IP tips and guidelines I mentioned above to get the most effective results.

If you want to ask any questions or clarifications, do not hesitate to post comments.

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