You're Warming Up Your Email...Right?

Hola amigos,

As someone who dabbles in email marketing, you’ve probably heard of the concept of warming your IP address.

From a purely technical point of view, warming your IP address means:

In simple English, inbox providers (Google, Apple, Outlook, etc.) require you to “warm” up your email list before you start blasting emails out to thousands of contacts.

Inbox providers require this because they have no obligation to accept your email. None. Zilch. Nadda.

You have to earn the trust of inbox providers and that starts with sending limited numbers of emails to your most engaged contacts.

Warming your IP is kind of like using a credit card

Let’s pretend you’re 17 again.

*Feels anxiety rising*

You’re just getting your first credit card. You have no prior credit history or credit rating or relationship with the bank — you’re a brand new customer.

Could you take that credit card and immediately buy a car and a month-long five-star vacation to the Amalfi Coast?

HELL NO!

First of all, you wouldn’t have the credit limit to do that. Second, the credit card company has no reason to trust that you’ll pay them back.

You have to earn the trust of the credit card company. You have to build your credit rating.

This is why, when you first get a credit card (or when you are trying to rebuild your credit), you’re advised to use your card sparingly, on small purchases, and to pay it off right away.

You are building a reputation with the credit card company as someone who can be trusted to pay them back on time.

Now apply this concept to email marketing.

An inbox provider needs to make sure that the emails you’re sending are being well-received by the people who are reading them before they let you start to blast emails out to thousands of contacts.

How to warm up your IP address

In order to not be confused with spammers, you’re going to want to employ these IP warming best practices, regardless of the size of your email list.

This is especially important if you’ve never sent these contacts newsletters in the past.

Here are a few steps to get you started:

1. Clean your list: I recently scrubbed 29,806 emails from a new client’s list. These contacts hadn’t interacted, AT ALL, with their past 20 email campaigns. Go through your spreadsheet of email addresses and look for anomalies, such as bizarre/fake email addresses, addresses with typos (E.g. @yahoo,com), and if you have the time, remove contacts you don’t want receiving your emails (E.g. bad customers).

2. Segment by engagement: If you have prior history about which contacts are the most engaged, make sure to send to them first. If you don’t have those analytics, segment by another relevant metric for engagement, such as “Purchased in last 6 months”. These people are more likely to open and click your email than someone who hasn’t purchased in years.

3. Establish a send schedule: If you have a list of 5,000 contacts, slowly drip your first email to them. Send it to 50 the first day, 100 the next, 200 the day after, and so on.

These steps are optional, but recommended — especially if you have a larger database of contacts.

Then, make sure you set up a welcome series. If you’re doing those correctly, they’ll have open rates in the 70th percentile and click rates in the 10th percentile. Click here to learn more about must-have automations.

Geeze…that sounds like a lot

Yeah, fair enough.

I’m not an idiot, I know most email marketers won’t follow proper IP warming protocols. It is what it is.

If you’re not going to follow the steps above, and you have a list of emails, at least do me this favour.

Run your list through NeverBounce.

NeverBounce is an inexpensive way to ensure that the contacts you’re sending emails to are valid. It’s the least you can do.

I’m doing NONE of that, bro!

Okay. That’s no skin off my back, compadre.

But here’s the thing: Your going to notice your deliverability rating start to drop. You’re going to go from hitting 99% of inboxes to 95%. You’ll begin to sweat.

Then, it’ll go from 95% to 90% with no signs of slowing down. You’ll start convulsing against your will.

Your decline will be exponential. Going from 90% to 80% will appear to happen overnight. You will lose control of all your faculties.

Thousands of messages will go to spam and promotion folders.

Your customers will begin asking why this is happening. Leads will evaporate. Hell will rise up and consume you.

When that happens, know that I’m out there somewhere, grinning ear to ear like the Cheshire cat.

Or, you know…make sure your IP address is warm.

Turn up the temperature on your IP address

Now that I’ve painted that very real picture of what will happen if you don’t warm your IP address, all you have to do is DO IT.

Warm’em up.

Take out the marshmallow and graham crackers and get cookin’.

As each email campaign is sent to your list, check on the analytics before sending your next email. Make sure to look at:

• Deliverability Rate: This should be >95%

• Open Rate: This should be >30%

• Click Rate: This should be >3%

• Unsubscribe Rate: This should be <1%

• Bounce Rate: This should be <2%

If you have any questions about what I’ve written here today, feel free to book a free 15-minute consultation.

Happy warming!AndrewTwitter | LinkedIn