How to warm up my sending domain?

When sending bulk emails, it's best to use a domain you own. But, if your domain is new or you've never used it for sending bulk emails, you need to establish its sender reputation first. This process, known as domain warm-up, helps with deliverability and ensures your emails reach the main inboxes of your subscribers.

Why is it important to warm up a sending domain?

Email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) carefully monitor sends from new domains to confirm if they can be trusted. Without a warm-up, emails are more likely to land in the spam folder instead of the main inbox. A sudden high volume of emails can trigger spam filters, so it's best practice to gradually increase sending volume to show email providers that you are a legitimate sender.

Warming up a sending domain

Here are the main steps you should take to warm up your sending domain:

Verify your sender domain

• Domain verification confirms to email providers that your sending platform (EmailOctopus or Amazon SES for EmailOctopus Connect accounts) has the right to send emails using your domain name.
• If you send transactional emails through different platforms, we recommend verifying a subdomain dedicated to marketing emails to separate their sender reputations.
• You can learn how to verify your sending domain here (if you use EmailOctopus Connect, click here).

Start with low sending volume

• Start sending 50-100 emails per day, gradually increasing the volume (for example, double the number of emails sent every few days).
• You can do that by segmenting your list with tags and then sending campaigns to a group of recipients with a selected tag.

Send to recent and engaged contacts first

• Begin with recipients who are more likely to open and interact with your emails, such as your most engaged and most recent signed-up contacts.
• Avoid sending to older lists where you don't have access to past contact activity history.

Monitor email metrics

• Track your metrics - open rates, bounce rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes.
• Adjust sending volume based on engagement.
• If you're not sure how to interpret your email results, feel free to reach out to our support – we're here to help.

Engage your audience and remove unresponsive emails

• Consider adding a note to your sign-up forms to let subscribers know to check their spam folder if they can't find your email. If the email is in their spam folder, they should mark it as "Not Spam" and move it to their main inbox. This kind of engagement helps train email providers to trust your messages and keeps future emails out of the spam folder.
• Encourage your audience to add your sender email address and/or domain to their list of approved senders.
• Include inciting CTA links in your emails to generate positive engagement and speed up the reputation-building process.
• Regularly clean your email list to remove inactive contacts.
• For more list cleaning tips, click here.

By following these steps for a couple of weeks, your domain should gain a positive sender reputation, reducing the risk of emails landing in spam folders. As a result, you should see increased open rates and better overall engagement from your recipients.