Marketers' Space: The importance of warming up your sender domain

Marketers' Space: The importance of warming up your sender domain

Hello Marketers,
Welcome back to yet another post! Today, we'll talk about why warming up your sender domain matters. Imagine you've recently started a business and want to share the news with your customers. You've designed a great email campaign using Zoho Campaigns. Naturally, you're excited and want to send it to all your contacts in one go; but if you skip the domain warm-up step, there's a good chance your emails will end up in spam instead of your contacts' inboxes.

What is a domain?

A domain is the unique address that marks a person's or business's identity on the internet. It's used for creating websites and sending emails, and helps recipients and service providers recognize who the message or website belongs to and whether it's coming from a trusted source.
If your email address is adam@zylkermotor.com, then zylkermotor.com is your domain.

What is domain warming?

Domain warming is a way of introducing your new domain to email service providers (ESPs) like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and Zoho Mail. Instead of sending an email campaign to all your contacts at once, you start with small batches and send them to the people who are most likely to open and interact with your emails. This step is important because ESPs want to make sure you're a genuine sender. When they see you sending emails slowly and consistently—and your recipients are opening them—they start trusting your domain. But if you suddenly send thousands of emails from a brand new domain, it may look suspicious to them, like spam activity. Since they don't have any record of your past sending behavior, they may block your emails or push them to the spam folder. Warming your domain helps avoid that by showing ESPs that you're a real business sending valuable messages to people who want to hear from you.

This isn't so different from other aspects of our day-to-day lives. For example, if we decide to start weight training, we don't walk into the gym and immediately try to lift the heaviest weight possible; we know that in doing so, we'll not only fail but also likely cause ourselves serious injuries. What we can do is start with lighter weights and fewer repetitions and allow our muscles and joints (in this case, our domains and IP reputations) to adapt to the stress gradually. This process of progressive overload is necessary to build the strength and capacity to handle heavier loads later. In the same way, sudden, massive email volumes are like lifting the "heaviest weight" at the gym; it stresses the receiving systems. A slow, controlled increase in volume helps you safely build your sending capacity without "injuring" your reputation.

Why domain warming matters

As ESPs identify new and unknown domains as suspicious, sending large volume of emails suddenly without a sending history can lead to the following consequences:
  1. Low deliverability: Your emails will consistently land in spam folders, rendering all of your campaign efforts useless.
  2. Higher bounce rates: Since your sender reputation hasn't been established yet, mailbox providers may reject your emails, which may cause excessive hard or soft bounces and signal poor sending hygiene.
  3. Reputation damage: Once your domain/IP is flagged as a potential spammer, it's very difficult and time-consuming to repair that bad reputation.
  4. Blacklisting: In severe cases, your sending domain could be placed on an industry-wide blacklist, halting your email efforts entirely.
  5. Lower engagement: When emails don't reach inboxes, few people see or interact with them, which means fewer opens, clicks, conversions, and lower overall campaign performance.

How to warm up your sender domain using Zoho Campaigns: A use case

Morris has recently expanded his store, Zylker Designs, into an online presence and set up a domain called zylkerdesigns.com. Excited about the launch, Morris wants to draft a welcome email campaign and send it to 20,000 subscribers in one go. He approaches Eva from the Zoho Campaigns Support team with his requirement, who warns him that sending a large volume of emails from a new domain can trigger ESPs to mark the emails as spam—which is not an ideal start for Morris' new business. She recommends that Morris warm up his domain using Zoho Campaigns before sending his email in bulk.
Importance of domain warming
Here's how he can achieve it:
  1. Step 1: Morris has to authenticate his sender domain under Settings → Domain Authentication using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prove legitimacy and security.
  2. Step 2: Instead of targeting all 20,000 contacts at once, Morris can group his contacts into different segments, categorizing them based on most engaged and active subscribers (those who frequently open and click emails), moderately engaged, and so on.
  3. Step 3: He can then send his campaigns to small batches of these contacts, and then gradually increase the number of recipients. He can try sending the campaigns based on recipients' time zones or optimal open times to increase his chances that recipients will notice and open his emails.
  4. Step 4: For the next two to four weeks, Morris must slowly increase his daily sending volume after closely monitoring his open rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints under Campaign Reports.
  5. Step 5: When the engagement metrics start looking healthy and consistent, Morris can scale up and send emails to his entire audience, because by now ESPs will have recognized his domain as a trusted sender with a healthy reputation and good inbox reach.
By following this approach, Morris can ensure better deliverability, brand credibility, and email performance, laying a strong foundation for all his future email campaigns.

Wrapping it up

Warming up your sender domain isn't merely considered a best practice; it's a primary step that determines whether your emails reach your recipients' inboxes or not. By gradually building trust with ESPs, authenticating your domain, and sending first to contacts who engage with your emails, you can make sure to avoid deliverability problems right from the start. So before hitting "send" on your next bulk campaign, keep in mind that a warm domain earns a strong reputation, and a strong reputation earns better inbox placement, higher engagement, and healthier results.

Regards,
Aiswarya Jayaprakash
User Education
Zoho Campaigns

    • Recent Topics

    • Zoho Invoice Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

      Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

    • Zoho Billing Now Supports VeriFactu for Businesses in Spain

      Starting from January 1, 2026, Spain requires real-time invoice reporting for all B2B transactions. From July 2026, this requirement will extend to B2C transactions as well. All reporting must be carried out through the VeriFactu to AEAT (Agencia Estatal

    • Weekly Tips : Make your email content error free with Spell check in Zoho Mail

      As someone who writes multiple emails a day, we are bound to make both grammatical and spelling errors. Most of them we may not even notice, and even if we do, we may not have the time to correct each one individually when we are in a hurry. So how do

    • Introducing Enhanced Storage Management

      We’re excited to roll out two new enhancements in Zoho Recruit, Subscription Information and Storage Management — designed to give admins complete visibility into subscription details, feature limits, and storage consumption — all from one place inside

    • how to download all my files

      We are in the middle of zoho docs to zoho workdrive migration. I can not access my zoho docs page. I get redirected immediately to a zoho workdrive page. I would like to download all my files so that I have a backup in case something goes wrong with the

    • Convert Zoho Books SalesOrder - Invoice

      Converting a Zoho Books Sales Order into an Invoice Using the SalesOrder Convert API Hello Zoho Developers, Today, we are sharing a simple and effective solution to convert a Zoho Books Sales Order into a Zoho Books Invoice using the SalesOrder Convert

    • Zoho Expense - Report Templates

      Hi Expense Team, I do a recurring trip once every week which has the same cost: Per diem Milage Toll Payment It would be great if there was a feature which allowed me to clone a previously submitted report or create a template reports. This would save

    • How to add tabular data when execute Add Record API

      Hi everyone! I was send api updateRecord follow by this request url : https://people.zoho.com/people/api/forms/json/<formLinkName>/updateRecord with parameters "inputData", "tabularData", "recordId". Ex picture below And response success: But. When I

    • Tip #51- Centralized Contact Management for Better Remote Support- 'Insider Insights'

      For our final topic of November, we’re diving into one of the most helpful features in Zoho Assist, the Contacts section on Zoho Assist;s dashboard. Whether you’re managing multiple clients, tracking past sessions, or simply looking to streamline your

    • Say Hello to Telephony in Zoho FSM

      Zoho FSM now brings complete telephony support so your team can manage inbound and outbound calls without switching tabs. Faster responses, smarter routing, and total call visibility—all in one place. Choose the telephony setup that works for you Zoho’s

    • E-Invoicing in Belgium with Zoho Inventory

      Starting January 1, 2026, Belgium is introducing mandatory electronic invoices (e-invoicing) for all B2B transactions between VAT-registered businesses. Invoices and credits notes must be exchanged in a prescribed digital format. How E-Invoicing Works

    • Employee ID is not correct in get records api V2 for leave

      Hi Team, We are facing an issue when calling the Get Records API V2. The employee.id returned in the response is not the actual employee record ID in Zoho People. As a result, our integration is forced to make an additional Get Record API call for every

    • Formatting Mailing Labels

      I want to use the "Print Mailing Labels" function on the drop down list, but I am not seeing a way to change the formatting on the mailing labels. At the moment, the information that appears on the mailing labels ARE NOT mailing addresses, but random

    • Canvas View - Print

      What is the best way to accomplish a print to PDF of the canvas view? Latest update (27th November 2025): We are excited to announce that the Canvas Print View is now available! We encourage you all to try it out and share your feedback with us. Learn

    • Zia Conversation Summary: Context at a glance for every customer interaction

      Hello everyone! Every customer conversation tells a story—but in CRM, that story is rarely in one place. A sales rep moving between multiple leads has to reopen long email threads, check call remarks, and revisit meeting notes just to remember what was

    • How to set a fixed width of column/cells

      Is there a way to set a 'fixed' width for cells in zoho sheet?   I know how to adjust the size of the colums.... but after I past a large block of text into a cell, it expands the cell size again. (yes, I have turned off word wrap)   How can I set a fixed width so the cells don't change size each time I add data to a cell?   Thanks.

    • Workdrive Oauth2 Token Isn't Refreshing

      I have set up oauth for a bunch of zoho apis and have never had a problem with oauth. With workdrive i am using the exact same template i usually use for the other zoho apps and it is not working. All requests will work for the first hour then stops so

    • Single Portal for Multiple Apps

      Hello, I'm just getting started with Zoho and I'm very overwhelmed. I am currently using the free trial of Zoho One, but if I can figure it out, I intend to upgrade to the paid version. Zoho One, of course, gives me  access to an entire suite of services/applications. One of the things I'd like to do is have a single place for clients (customers?) to log in and view current projects, invoices, contact information, etc. A single login for my clients. A single portal. I've come across documentation

    • 【開催報告】 大阪 ユーザー交流会 2025/11/20（木）Zoho CRM Plus 活用のアイデアとデータの“見える化”

      皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの中野です。 11/20（木）に、大阪 ユーザー交流会を開催しました。本投稿では、その様子をお届けします。 当日の登壇資料などもこちらに共有しますので、参加できなかった皆さまもご参照ください。 （Zoho 社員セッションの登壇資料については、11/28(金)に開催予定の東京回の開催報告で共有いたします） 今年2回目の開催となる大阪 ユーザー交流会では、株式会社KDDIウェブコミュニケーションズ 山田さんによる Zoho CRM Plus の事例セッションのほか、「Zoho

    • Every rating counts: Shaping customer experience

      We are back to that beautiful time of the year. It is the season to reflect, be thankful, and appreciate everything that has happened throughout the year. Thanksgiving is a time we connect with our family, friends, and relatives to strengthen relationships,

    • How to remove duplicate contacts

    • Custom Field for Subscription

      Hi, I can't find a way to add a custom field (to contain a license key generated from our software) against a subscription? Is the only place to add this information in the Invoice module (as custom field for invoice)? When a customer views his subscription via the customer portal, there appears no way to display a license key for them? The invoice is not the natural place to store a license key for a particular subscription, so where else can this be stored and displayed?

    • Custom View and Custom Fields on Zoho Books

      Hi, I have some custom fields on Estimates and Invoices. I also use Custom Views so I can have a lot of information at a glance. I want to include my custom fields as columns in my custom views of estimates / invoice, but it looks like is not possible.

    • Dropdown data depends on filters in another field.

      In my quote form I have a lookup field called Reseller that pulls from Accounts. I would like it to pull from Accounts, but only those accounts with an account field 'Type' where that is 'Reseller'. Does anyone know a way to do this? Similarly, I'd like

    • Is it possible to adjust the web browser tab title (when a ZoHo Desk ticket is opened)

      Hi All, When I open a ZoHo Desk ticket in a web browser, the tab title (text that appears at the top of the browser tab) uses the logic: *company icon picture* (xxxx) #ticket number - company name See below (highlighted in red) for reference. Company

    • Collections Management: #7 Common Mistakes during Payment Collection

      Payment collection may appear straightforward in most cases. Still, as your customer base expands and transaction volume increases, it becomes clear that even small inefficiencies can lead to delayed payments, increased support load, or even revenue loss.

    • Rename Record Summary PDF in SendMail task

      So I've been tasked with renaming a record summary PDF to be sent as part of a sendmail task. Normally I would offer the manual solution, a user exports the PDF and uploads it to a file upload field, however this is not acceptable to the client in this

    • Text/SMS With Zoho Desk

      Hi Guys- Considering using SMS to get faster responses from customers that we are helping.  Have a bunch of questions; 1) Which provider is better ClickaTell or Screen Magic.  Screen Magic seems easier to setup, but appears to be 2x as expensive for United States.  I cannot find the sender id for Clickatell to even complete the configuration. 2) Can customer's reply to text messages?  If so are responses linked back to the zoho ticket?  If not, how are you handling this, a simple "DO NOT REPLY" as

    • Custom Field in Zoho Projects pulling into Analytics

      We have a client that we have built our their new business process using Zoho Projects, and we have build a lot of custom fields with their their Projects where they are capturing specific data points that we want to be able to track and pull data, as

    • Marketer's Space - Holiday season email marketing tips you should know

      Hello Marketers! Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space! 'Tis the season—that time of the year everyone eagerly anticipates. While most look forward to relaxing, marketers will be super-busy from late November to early January. Mistakes can

    • Zia Competitor Alerts made easy with Zia's suggestions

      Hi everyone, In addition to the existing manually added competitors, Zia will now find your competitors for you - instantly. Earlier, you had to identify competitors through research manually, support tickets, or tradeshows—a time-consuming process that

    • Add Custom Field Inside Parts Section

      How to Add Custom Field Inside Parts Section in Workorder like Category and Sub- Category

    • Zoho CRM Community Digest October 2025 | Part 2

      Hello Everyone! From new mobile capabilities and smarter integrations to real-world workflow fixes and developer insights, all the highlights from the second half of October is covered right here. Let’s dive in. Product Updates: Zoho CRM Mobile Updates:

    • Understanding Zoho Contracts

      Effective contract management relies on systems that are structured, organized, and reliable. Every feature, workflow, rule, and restriction in Zoho Contracts are designed the way they are to ensure consistency, compliance, and control across every stage

    • Tip of the Week #76– Automate your inbox during vacation in Zoho TeamInbox

      When you're on vacation or away from your desk, the last thing you want is for important emails to be missed or left unanswered. The good news is, you can easily set up rules in Zoho TeamInbox to assign incoming messages automatically to a teammate who's

    • Domain restriction for User Management actions in Zoho One

      Greetings, Zoho One Admins! To strengthen account security further and safeguard user management settings, we are imposing domain-based restrictions for user account-focused admin actions in Zoho One. In addition to password reset of user, organization

    • Zoho Mail iOS app update: Signature

      Hello everyone! In the latest version(3.1.7) of the Zoho Mail app update, we have brought in support to create, edit and remove signature within the app. You can create signature from the compose screen as well as from within the Settings module(inside

    • Desktop app doesn't support notecards created on Android

      Hi, Does anybody have same problem? Some of last notecards created on Android app (v. 6.6) doesn't show in desktop app (v. 3.5.5). I see these note cards but whith they appear with exclamation mark in yellow triangle (see screenshot) and when I try to

    • Approval Button in Subform

      Hi Team, I’m working on a subform-based requirement where users will submit requests, and these requests must go through approval by multiple team managers. Each line item in the subform needs to be individually approved or declined based on the user's

    • Setting checkbox value on template in Sign from Creator

      Good day, Please help me understand how do I set a tick from a checkbox in Creator into a checkbox on a Sign template. Below is the only values on the Sign template and the code from Creator, "field_boolean_data": {}, "field_date_data": {}, "field_radio_data":

    • Next Page