All the effort you put into crafting compelling and impactful email campaigns will go in vain if you don’t focus on improving your email deliverability in the first place. There’s a lot more to successfully landing your emails in your recipients’ inboxes than what meets the eye. To ensure the same, marketers have to tick off multiple boxes. IP warming is one among them. So, what exactly does this term mean? It refers to the practice of establishing a positive sending reputation for either a brand new IP address or a recently-revived one.
When you launch a new IP, it is essential that you earn the trust of ESPs (Email Service Providers) and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to avoid getting flagged. IP warming is how you go about it. It involves sending emails from the concerned IP in gradually increasing volumes over a few weeks (typically 4-8). Want to dive deep into this practice? Read on to find out!
Why Is IP Warming Important?
Going dedicatedly about IP warming is key to sealing the reach and visibility of your campaigns. The points listed below illustrate the significance of this practice. When you hire email marketing expert, make sure to brief them on the same.
- IP warming reduces your chances of getting blacklisted. With a massive volume of emails being exchanged on a daily basis, ESPs subject each and every email directed at their client’s inbox to immense scrutiny. Their primary objective is to keep their users’ inboxes as free from spam as possible. Thus, if you proceed with sending bulk messages to your recipients from a new IP without warming, it will instantly arouse the suspicion of ESPs. Subsequently, this will either get you flagged or blacklisted, both of which inflict a crushing blow to your sending reputation.
- IP warming opens the doors to higher engagement. Think about it- if ISPs and ESPs aren’t suspicious of your address, they will allow all of your delivered emails to land in your subscribers’ inboxes. As a result, you will fetch better opens and clicks compared to what you would without IP warming.
- An IP warming exercise isn’t simply confined to delivering a limited volume of emails to your contacts. You also have to aim at eliciting a response from your audience. After all, you can’t hope to convince an ISP of your IP’s credibility if your recipients aren’t engaging with your messages. In the process, you essentially learn to optimize your content strategy. If you are able to figure out what works for your target audience during the IP warming activity, you will have no trouble figuring out a content roadmap that will keep them engaged in the long run.
IP Warming Best Practices We Swear By
New to IP warming? You would definitely want to keep the following pointers handy.
- Scale up your sending volume gradually. As we mentioned earlier, the process of IP warming is extended over a few weeks. So, you need to increase the number of sent emails by a small margin each day. Sending a disproportionately high number of emails on your first attempt with your new IP is something that is extremely frowned upon. The best course of action is to chalk out a dedicated schedule (say, sending 50 emails on day 1, 100 on day 2, 200 on day 3, and so on and so forth) and stick to it.
- Look to it that your content is engaging. Should your subscribers fail to respond to your emails, your entire IP warming operation will be of no avail.
Here are a few things you can do to grab your readers’ attentions:- Embrace personalization. An email that specifically addresses your pain points versus one that makes a generic statement- which are you more likely to open? The first one, right? Well, your audience is no different. The more targeted your messages are, the better are your chances of driving engagement.
- Electrify your emails with visual components. That said, don’t forget that an excess of them will increase the file size, and by extension the loading time of your emails. Hence, you are advised to exercise a certain degree of caution while using them.
- Structure your copy neatly into headings and subheadings to increase its readability.
- Write catchy subject lines. How else are you going to nudge your readers to open your emails?
- Make your CTAs (call-to-action) prominent, both in terms of copy and design. Write your CTA phrases using action words to stir an emotional response within your readers. And on the design front, make certain that the button is of the ideal size, is placed appropriately, and contrasts sharply against your email background.
- Maintain your sending frequency and volume even after the IP warming period is over. If there are drastic fluctuations, you might find yourself being teleported back to square one.
- Monitor your contact list. After you hire email marketing consultant, ask them to periodically scan through your list to weed out inactive and dormant addresses from it. Trying to communicate with them will only bring brief to your sender reputation and deliverability.
Wrapping It Up
IP warming is critical to shaping the success of your email campaigns. We hope the tips and techniques discussed above are able to guide you effectively!
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Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.