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

    • Trying to show the actual Terms & Conditions on PDF

      Hi, On Zoho forms I am trying to have the actual terms and conditions that the user needs to accept also show on the pdf that they receive after. Right now it only says "Agreed". Please help.

    • Installing EMAIL Setup in New Domain

      Respected Support team, I'm facing an issue with cloudflare in Pakistan, I want to setup Zoho Mail Setup but I Don't know how to enable Zoho mail setup without cloudflare. My Website https://stumbleguyzzapk.com/, https://fakservices.com/ is using CF,

    • Enhancements to Zoho Meeting Annotator

      Hello Zoho Meeting Team, Hope you are doing well. We would like to share a few improvement suggestions regarding the Zoho Meeting Annotator used during screen sharing. While the current version provides helpful annotation tools, there are several limitations

    • Zoho Social/Marketing Plus - Addition to "Monitor" function

      It would be very helpful if the Monitor function would allow us to add a column to monitor hashtags in addition to pages and mentions. This is a common and very valuable function in other social listening tools.

    • Zoho forms - > Zoho desk multiple agents

      Hi! I would like to use a standard form to be used when we hiring people, so we looked at zoho forms for that. Now we would like to get that info in to Zoho desk and their different users shall take care of this ticket simultaneous . So, what would be

    • Almacenamiento

      Hola, Quisiera saber como podría hacer para bajar el almacenamiento de 5gb a mis usuarios, en otras palabras los quiero ir limitando de la cuota real, y luego ir agregando poco a poco la cantidad hasta llegar a los 5gb que me dan en el plan free. 

    • Will I Get a Refund If I Downgrade Zoho Mail?

      Hello, We upgraded an email account for our new employee. However, the employee left after one month, and now I've reduced the number of Zoho Mail users from 7 to 6. Can we get a refund for the remaining portion of our annual payment?

    • Introducing the revamped What's New page

      Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main

    • Zoho Books - France

      L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

    • Name autocomplete

      Hi, During searching emails the web tool does not always propose the auto-completion of the saved emails. As a result I either have to go to contacts and look up the exact email, or the exact full name including the middle name and any dots, which is very annoying. For example I have a contact that I emailed in the past that has "First M. Last" <email@email.com> type of contact. When I start typing 'First' the email may or may not pop up in the autocomplete menu. Then if I start typing "first last"

    • How do i follow up my email campaign in-thread

      Is there a way to follow up the email campaign so that it is in-thread using zoho campaigns? eg customer gets original email with subject line "hello" then 5 days later follow up would be with subject line "RE: hello".

    • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.29.0)

      Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.29.0) is here with new features and enhancements to enhance your business communication. Let's take a quick look at them. Access shared mailboxes. You can now view and access shared mailboxes in Trident, which are

    • Books is extremely slow again today !

      Everything is running slowly even with 500mb connection speed

    • Cyclic dependencies in many-to-many relationships...

      I have an application which includes a form for companies, and a form for contacts. Each company can be assigned 1 technical and 1 administrative contact. I have this working okay so far, but I want to copy the scripts used so far to a new empty application. When I import the scripts it fails with a message that says: Problem encountered while creating the application Error in resolving form dependency:Cyclic dependency among the forms:[Company, Contact] What can I do to resolve this? After all,

    • Zoho API to create ticket

      I'm developing an integration to create tickets via API, but, locally it works (send and recieve requests). In production it also works sending requests, but, my file don't recieve any response data. My URL is available in Zoho API Console and I have

    • Automate Timesheet Approvals with Multi-level Approval Rules

      Introducing Approval Rules for Timesheets in Zoho Projects. With this automation, teams can manage how timesheets are reviewed and approved by setting up rules with criteria and assigning approvers to handle submissions. Timesheet, when associated to

    • Labels Part 2

       Hey Zoho Mail Team, On the labels window on the left-hand pane, alphabetize label name display, rather than displaying in order created.  This one should be easy. Thanks, Drew

    • Building Toppings #1 - Serving your needs with Bigin Toppings

      Hey Biginners! We're excited to kick off our Developer Community series on building toppings for Bigin, and our goal is to provide an accessible, beginner-friendly, and relevant path for every developer. Imagine creating tiny pieces of software that unlock

    • Can we create Sprint with tasks from Multiple projects?

      Hi Team, We were using Zoho Sprints for quite sometime. Currently we have started the process of Sprint method. We couldnt create the active sprint board with the tasks from multiple projects. I would like to know whether this is possible or Any timeline

    • Tip of the Week #74– Create automated workflows in MS Power Automate

      Zoho TeamInbox now connects directly with Microsoft Power Automate, letting you streamline everyday routines tasks such as from sending emails to managing threads, with automated workflows. About the integration Zoho TeamInbox integrates with Microsoft

    • Account validation

      Hello everyone, I registered my account on ZeptoMail to use the system, but the problem is that the verification period on Zepto's end has already passed and I have limited functionality.

    • Paste issues in ZOHO crm notes

      Hi, since a week or so I have issues with the paste function in ZOHO CRM. I use "notes" to copy paste texts from Outlook emails and since a week or so, the pasting doesnt function as it should: some text just disappears and it gives a lot of empty lines/enters.....

    • Is it possible to add a gradient color to a newsletter im designing?

      From where i sit it looks like you can only choose a single color but not combine 2 colors?

    • New Feature: Audit Log in Zoho Bookings

      Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce Audit Log, a new feature designed to help you track all key actions related to your appointments. With Audit Log, you can maintain transparency, strengthen security, and ensure accountability.

    • Account disabled

      I have an issue I need help with. Whilst trialing ZOHO CRM I created the following: Account1 (-------------) using m__ame@m__rg___s__i__.___.__ and 2 personal emails Account2 (-------------) using a personal email and 2 users _al__1@______________._o_.__

    • Blocked Email

      We are a Zoho One subscriber and use Yahoo as our MX provider. A few times each year, for the past four years, CRM blocks one or more of my Zoho One users from receiving internal email from CRM. This includes "@mentions" in all modules, and emails from

    • message var is empty in bot mention handler

      Hi, I'm encountering a problem: in my bot's mention handler, I want to retrieve the text the user typed when mentioning the bot. Example: On the #tests-cyril channel, I send this message: “@Donna hello how are you ?” I expect the system variable "message"

    • Remembrance Day to Remember – Recalling Values

      The phrase “at the eleventh hour” refers to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the hostilities of World War I came to an end—but it still holds meaning today. Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) is observed on November

    • How to display two measures (sales and price) divided by categories on one line chart

      Hi everyone, I’m having trouble figuring out how to display two columns on a line chart with category breakdowns. What I need is a line chart where one line represents Sales and the other represents Price. However, the Price data is divided into around

    • Create custom rollup summary fields in Zoho CRM

      Hello everyone, In Zoho CRM, rollup summary fields have been essential tools for summarizing data across related records and enabling users to gain quick insights without having to jump across modules. Previously, only predefined summary functions were

    • Introducing the locking option for CRM records

      Last modified on 06/04/2023: Record locking option in CRM is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all DCs. Note that it was an early access feature available only upon request. Hello All, Hope you're doing well! We're thrilled to introduce our latest

    • Two new enhancements in Zoho CRM: Introducing new criteria for user fields and displaying group information in users page

      Announcement moderated on 14th June, 2023. Dear All, These enhancements are opened for all users in all DCs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear All, Hope you're well! We are here with two useful

    • Tip #49- Navigating the Remote Support Dashboard in Zoho Assist- 'Insider Insights'

      The Remote Support dashboard in Zoho Assist is designed to help technicians quickly access, manage, and monitor all their support sessions from a single, intuitive interface. Whether you’re starting a new session, managing ongoing connections, or reviewing

    • BMI formula

      I've been trying for hours to calculate BMI using height and weight as my only inputs. It's a simple calculation and I even went to ChatGPT to help me figure this out in Zoho Forms, but it led me down a path of "try this" and "try this". None of my attempts

    • SEO on blogs

      Hello, google is not able to find my blogs. Can you advice me if I need to change some settings or anything else to make it retrievable via SEO many thanks, hans

    • Duplicated Notebooks

      Out of the blue, almost all of my notebooks got duplicated and the different copies contain different information. Some seem like older copies than the others. I use the linux desktop app and sometimes the Android app. I assume that the sync failed at some point and was unable to merge the two versions together. But I'm afraid to add anything else to my notebook because if it can't properly sync 5 notebooks with only a handful of notes each, what will happen when I have hundreds of notes and I lose

    • Mind mapping in Zoho Projects

      Good morning,   I would like to congratulate the Zoho team for building such an inovative and responsive application that fits in the daily challenges of so many work groups. I would like suggest you another functionality that helps a lot in project planning and development: mind mapping. Mind mapping would be of great help for brianstorming, knowledge management and other needs in online collaboration.   Thanks and wish you all the best! George Maha Empresa Júnior Multidisciplinar do Instituto de

    • Retainer invoice in Zoho Finance modlue

      Hello, Is there a way of creating retainer invoices in the Zoho Finance module? If not can I request this is considered for future updates please.

    • Documents don't sync properly

      Hello, My team recently moved to Zoho workDrive, some of my team, work remotely so we believed Zoho would be the best way to share and edit files as well as access files withing the team. However we are experiencing sync issues, when a file is uploaded in the file explorer and shows sync complete, same file can be seen on the Zoho web app but other team members can't see the said file because it is not syncing properly. i figured out that if i were to go to preferences in settings and resync the

    • We are looking for an experienced Zoho Developer

      Hi Everyone! We’re on the lookout for a skilled Zoho Developer with hands-on experience in the Zoho Developer Platform (The Vertical CRM Platform) and if you don't know what that is, then you are not the person we are looking for. You would also need

    • Next Page