How to warm up you sender domain - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

How to warm up your sender domain

In short: Warming up a sender domain means sending limited emails to your most engaged contacts and increasing the volume gradually over several weeks, until mailbox providers trust the domain. Before you start, authenticate the domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and clean your mailing list. If you see bounces, unsubscribes, or spam complaints, slow down.
An email delivery's performance comes with several factors, such as content quality, mailing list health, contact engagement, and, most importantly, sender domain/IP reputation. Mailbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Outlook give significant weightage for domain reputation.

You might have started a new business, be new to email marketing, going through a branding shift, or using your sender domain rarely. In these cases, you may have a newly purchased domain or an old domain that has a low reputation score among mailbox providers. Such domains with low reputation score among mailbox providers and anti-spam services are considered cold. Due to low sender reputation, the domains are prone to lower email delivery rates.

In this article, we'll take you through some of the hacks to warm up your domain and increase its reputation.

Warming up a sender domain – An infographic.

Comparison of Cold and Warm sender domains

Cold sender domain
Warm sender domain
Domains with low reputation score and newly purchased domains are said to be cold.
A warm sender domain has a good reputation score with anti-spam services and mailbox providers.
Newly purchased domains don't have previous conversation history with recipients. So, mailbox providers have more filters for emails from such domains to observe if the sender is genuine.
Domains with good reputation score and positive responses from contacts for previous emails are considered safe by mailbox providers. Such domains have more inbox placement rates.
Poor email deliverability and more chances of getting blacklisted with anti-spam services.
Higher email deliverability than a cold domain.
A cold domain can eventually be converted into a warm domain, with good email sending practices and hygienic mailing list.
A warm domain can also become cold, if the sender's email practices and mailing list maintenance are compromised at any point of time.

Before warming up

If you think your domain needs a warmup, follow these best practices for better impact in your warmup process.

How to warm up your cold domain

Warming up a sender domain means regularly sending limited emails for several weeks, until your email delivery is ensured and the domain reputation is built. Zoho Campaigns typically recommends about four to six weeks (a couple of weeks at the very least, for lower volumes).
  • Start with contacts who have recently engaged, and those who are more likely to open your emails. This will result in more open rates, and will create a good rapport with the recipient systems. Later, you can gradually add the contacts who are less likely to give a positive response to your emails. For example, contacts who signed up recently are more likely to give positive responses. Leave out contacts who have had no opens or clicks in roughly the last 90 days until your domain has built up its reputation.
  • You can segment your mailing list and target contacts who are more interested in your emails.
  • Zoho Campaigns recommends you to start with an average count of 5 - 10% of recipients per day from a sender domain and avoid sending hundreds of emails in the beginning. Once you're sure that your emails are getting good responses from the recipients and has a good delivery rate, gradually increase your email count by 5% of contacts per day. If you have a high contact volume, you can start sending emails with 50 - 100 contacts and increase by 50 contacts per day. For a sample day-by-day ramp, see how to warm up a sender domain.
  • If your email gets undelivered or has unsubscribes and spam complaints, you can slow down and reduce your emails-per-day to the count in the beginning of warm up again. Follow a similar pattern by observing your contact response and email delivery, and then increase your email count by five emails per day. This will help your domain warm up. Google asks senders to keep their spam rate below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, so pause or hold your volume steady if complaints climb toward those levels.
 
Tips
If you have a high volume of contacts in a single recipient domain, you can:
  • First, send test emails and check delivery rate.
  • Split and add them to various lists having other recipient domains as well. Distribute the concentrated crowd.
  • For example, if you have more Gmail contacts, then distribute them into various lists. You can send them marketing emails with a gap of a few days for every list. By doing this, you can avoid email delays and throttles. To learn more, see what to do if your emails get throttled and why Gmail rate limits your marketing emails.
 
  • While you warm up your domain, pay close attention to your open-click rates, spam complaints, bounces, unsubscribes, low domain reputation, and spam traps. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can inflate open rates, so give clicks, bounces, and spam complaints more weight than opens.
  • For contacts with a communication gap of more than one year, avoid sending marketing emails. Know their interest through a winback campaign (re-engagement email).
  • Recommend that your recipients add your email address to their contacts or safe senders' list. This ensures better inbox placement rate. To learn how to add your sender address to recipients' address books, see steps to add a sender address to the address book.

After warm up

Domain warmup is not a single day workout but a regular practice with which you can ensure good email delivery. It may seem quite complex in the beginning, but once you've started warming up a domain, you'll easily learn how to improve your open-click rates and how to avoid email delivery issues. This understanding of the email deliverability basics will help you build your email marketing stronger.

If your domain goes quiet for a long stretch (for example, around 30 days), mailbox providers can treat it as cold again. Restart at a low volume and build back up, instead of resuming your old volume. See how to warm up a sender domain.