Speaker 0: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the next of MarDreamin. My name is Amy Zielinski, and I am with Sercante. I’m a marketing automation strategist here at Sercante. I have been working in marketing cloud for ten, eleven years, somewhere along those lines. Um, have all of my marketing cloud certifications as well as a couple others. Um, working with clients for many years, I have found that IP warming tends to be a very stressful subject for many of my clients. So I’m here to speak today about fire and ice, how to avoid both of them with a successful IP warming strategy. First, we’d like to thank our sponsors from our Dreamin. They’re all listed here with their wonderful logos.

And I would like to go through our agenda for today. So first thing is what is IP warming, and how are we supposed to hit the perfect temperature? Email selection will discuss how to drive engagement from day one of IP warming and make sure that our, uh, emails are hitting the right people with our audience selection, how to choose our audience carefully and wisely. Next, we’ll hit on timeline and how to give ourselves enough time to get our IP warm. And then altogether now, I’m a Beatles fan. I don’t know about anybody else, but we will take a leap of faith and watch it soar. So we’re going to put all these pieces together and see how our IP warming strategy comes to fruition. And again, if you have any questions during this session, please feel free to put those in chat. I do have a moderator here who will help me to get to those at the end of the session.

First question, what is IP warming? So the goal of IP warming is really to build up thirty days of sending history and data. We do this so that we do not seem foreign or spammy, um, when we are sending our emails out of our account to our total segmented audience later on. We wanna start by sending small volumes of email and gradually increasing this volume over time. And there are gonna be factors that affect what IP warming looks like for your business and your email marketing program. Some of these factors are things like your list size, your list quality, subscriber engagement. Um, all of these can influence the amount of time that it’s gonna take for you to warm your IP to a good spot where you can start sending regularly.

This is one of the first questions that I have found over the years as very important to ask, Me, personally, two clients, but also to ask yourself. Oftentimes, I have seen people be sold a dedicated IP when one was not actually needed. So here, we’re gonna discuss, do we even need to warm our IP? Only dedicated IPs need to be warmed. The difference between a dedicated IP and a shared IP is that a dedicated IP is only for you and your email marketing program. A shared IP is one that is shared with several other companies who are also sending low levels of email. Um, there are dangers with sending from a shared IP and that you cannot be sure what the other sender’s reputations are that are using that IP address. So you may have some spam complaints or things that get levied against you that are not your fault. Um, however, there is no need for a dedicated IP if you are not sending more than a 100,000 emails per month. That doesn’t sound like a lot, although to some businesses it really is. So make sure that if you are planning to use a dedicated IP, you are sending at least this level, and that’s individual emails. So if your list size is 5,000 that you’re sending on a weekly basis, you’re not gonna hit that number. Um, so you really need to be sending 20,000 emails a week, at least. If you are sending over 2,000,000 emails per month, you will need more than one IP address. Um, that’s not something we’re gonna discuss in this presentation, but it is important to note that if you are that large, you will need more than one. And just that little note down at the bottom, if you aren’t sending at this level, then if you’ve been sold a dedicated IP, you need to go back and request a shared IP because it’s going to be near impossible for you to keep your IP warm with a smaller list size than this.

Alright. Next, we have the 10 goals of IP warming. These are broad goals, but they’re really the things that you should be aiming for as you go through this process.

1. The first is to establish a positive IP reputation. Obviously, that’s what we’re here for with IP warning, but we want to build and maintain a good center reputation with the service providers. We’re gonna call those ESPs, by the way, as we go through this, um, and inbox providers. So we want to make sure that we are recognized, that we are not marked as spam, and that we are going to hit the inbox with those providers.

2. Our second goal is to ensure high inbox deliverability. So we want to make sure that we have a high inbox placement rate, particularly with the major ESPs. So Gmail, number one, they are the largest, um, provider of email for most of the world, it seems like, having done quite a few international warnings as well. Yahoo, Outlook, Hotmail, AOL. Um, Comcast can sometimes be quite a large one. So this is something that you should pay attention to the domains that your audience is using. Um, we can’t necessarily tell where somebody with a company domain, for example, sercante.com, we cannot tell exactly where they are or what they are using, but we can look at those personal emails and make sure that we are getting high inbox placement there. There are some tools out there as well that can help you to see if you are hitting the inbox or if you are hitting spam. If you are finding you are having issues, then it would be worth looking into an inbox placement tool. There is, I might add, there is no way to ensure that you are hitting the featured inbox and not something like the promotions tab within Gmail. Um, unfortunately, that is not something that can be controlled no matter how hard you try. So remember that. But as long as you are not landing in spam or receiving complaints, then that is a win.

3. Goal number three is going to be gradually increasing our volume. So, again, we’re going to slowly increase the sending volume to our predetermined limit over a period of weeks. We’ll talk more about determining that limit. It could be your total list size. It could be just what your general sending segmentation looks like. Right? So if you are sending to a quarter of your list daily, but you never plan on sending to the entire list at the same time, then maybe we just need to aim for that daily limit, um, and not worry about sending to the entire 1,000,000 people in our audience.

4. Goal number four is to minimize the bounce rate. So we wanna keep our bounce rates low under 2% during the IP warming period. Now this does not include hard or soft bounces. So there’s generally technically, five types of bounces that you should be looking for. The first is hard bounces. These are things like email address is invalid. Um, soft bounces are going to be it just couldn’t be delivered for one reason or another. Technical bounces, very similar to soft in that it is, um, an issue with the ESP themselves generally or something with the person’s inbox. There’s unknown bounces where the system could not determine why the bounce was was registered. And then lastly, we have our block bounces, and that’s what we really care about. Um, you should try to keep your list as clean as possible regardless and try to filter out any email addresses that you know are not valid. There are tools to help you do that. So regardless, you want to make sure just only your block bounces are staying under 2%.

5. Number five is to maximize engagement metrics. So we are going to monitor and attempt to optimize our open rates and our click through rates. It is extremely important to get our emails opened and clicked so that the ESPs will recognize us as being a sender that our audience wants to hear from, um, that we have valid content that is not something that should be marked as spam.

6. Achieve a low spam complaint rate is number six. We need to keep our spam complaint rate below point 1%. Um, I am a marketing cloud expert, but I’m not sure about other, um, sending platforms. However, I know in marketing cloud, you can, uh, pull your complaints to make sure where your rate is stay.

7. Number seven is to build trust with your subscribers. So you wanna foster good relationships with your recipients by sending relevant personalized content. Um, this is always true, Right? So we want to make sure we’re always sending relevant personalized content to our, um, subscribers, but it’s even more so important during the IP warming process because you want to get, again, those clicks and those opens. And doing that is easier with personalized content.

8. Number eight is to monitor and adjust based on feedback loops. Feedback loops are provided by the, um, ESPs specifically and ISPs. Um, they you can visit their websites in order to check the feedback loops, um, to see how your IP is performing with that specific group. So this is something that I know Google definitely offers and is a very easy tool to take take advantage of. Um, something you should consider doing is signing up for those feedback loops during the warming process.

9. Number nine is to build long term deliverability and sender trust. So we need to ensure that once our warming is completed, that the IP can send those emails consistently without major fluctuations in deliverability. So this does mean we don’t wanna start sending to bad email addresses or people that we know have not interacted with our brand in years after IP warming is complete just because we have them available to us. We need to always make sure we’re selecting the best audience for any email sent and not only IP warming. It also means that we need to make sure to continue sending after IP warming is complete. I see a lot of my clients that just go dark after IP warming. Right? We work with them to get these emails sent out, and they just they pick their content, but they don’t plan for the future after IP warming is completed. So you need to make sure to have a good email sending plan in place to where as soon as IP warming is done, you can start sending your regularly scheduled emails, um, in a timely manner.

10. And goal number 10 is to avoid blacklisting. Um, ensure your new IP is not on any blacklist during or after the warming process. Um, you can check these things in some different tools. I know MX toolbox has a good way for you to check those blacklists. There’s several different, uh, websites that offer that service.

Alright. I’m gonna move on to email selection. So we’re gonna talk about how we can drive engagement with the emails that we select and try to get the most opens and clicks for our, you know, bang for our buck when we’re sending these IP warming emails. There’s four things that I like to suggest using for IP warming emails. Non time sensitive campaigns. We’re going to go into more detail on all of these on following slides. Engaging content, engaging subject lines, and using some of those small volume transactional campaign campaigns that you might have in your arsenal.

A non time sensitive campaign looks like a campaign that can be sent over multiple days, sometimes even weeks, depending on how large your list is. Um, you need to ensure that you can get through all of the subscribers that you need to for your active audience or, you know, your semi active audience in the time frame that this email will still be valid. So using something where there’s a sale that’s coming up in two days, then the it expires is not going to be recommended. Um, your content should stand the test of time, does not include deadlines, and it should be applicable to your entire audience and not only a small segment. I like to send my IP warming emails to the entire audience or, again, the predetermined number that we’re trying to get to. So you need to make sure that this will be relevant for everybody.

Engaging content. I hope we all know to some extent what that looks like. Right? So we definitely are going to want to use personalization in our content. Um, anything that prompts clicks and responses. It is shown, and I don’t have the metrics on here, unfortunately, but it is shown that, you know, using even first name, anything personalized or associated to that user and what they have done with your brand or what you know about them is always going to get more opens and clicks. Surveys are a good option because they do prompt clicks, and they collect information that you can use at a later time. Newsletters. Um, if you choose the newsletter route, which is the easiest probably, route to go, make sure your newsletter is engaging, contains useful information, potentially pulls in some information about that person to make it more relevant to them. Sales or coupons. Like I said here, I don’t know about you, but I almost always open an email if it has a coupon in it because I love a good, uh, deal. But you do need to be careful about those types of things because sometimes sales language can be caught in spam traps. So if you’re going to go the sales or coupon route, I do recommend doing that after a few weeks, um, to make sure you’re not coming out of the gate and getting blocked due to sales language. And lastly, internal communications. A lot of people don’t think about this, but first of all, make sure to put your internal list in your IP warming SENS, um, be and tell your internal users to click and open those campaigns. Um, that will help you to get essentially free clicks and responses that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise just by using people that you can communicate with directly. Um, also, you know, if it is something even HR related. Right? I mean, it’s going to get a high open rate because internal communications are generally important.

The next piece is going to be engaging subject lines. So we need to make sure our subject line includes personalization, um, almost every time. In my opinion. Your subject line should have somebody’s name or the name of a product or, you know, something that relates to the person and a strong call to action. So something that prompts are open and is not a statement. Right? I mean, you want it to be something that really captures them and says, I need to open that email and see what that’s about. Again, opens and clicks are key.

When we talk about small volume transactional campaigns, we’re talking about things like receipts, password reset, account confirmation, loyalty programs, and welcome journeys. So these are all really good because these types of campaigns are generally sent to either brand new subscribers who are very engaged when they first come to your product or the most engaged subscribers because they have recently interacted with you in some way. Right? They have taken an action that prompts you to give them loyalty information. They have asked for a new account or a password reset. So all of these things are going to be very easy wins. You do need to make sure these are monitored closely, so if you have any issues during your warming, that you are going in and updating these or stopping them if need be based on the results of your IP warming.

Overall best practices for the email selection. Again split campaigns between your new and legacy email system if you have one. If you are sending out of a legacy email system go ahead and just send to the rest of the audience. This allows you to send more like your normal cadence, which is important, um, and only send to those who are the most active in the beginning so that you can get your best audience and your best chance of getting those opens. You can keep those old people who do not engage with you in your legacy mail system in the meantime. Decide on your emails ahead of IP warming. Determine how many you’re gonna need and go ahead and build those out ahead of time. Prevent yourself from scrambling last minute to get an email ready. That’s never fun. Um, it is best to just work ahead. And, again, send internally. Um, it can help get free clicks and opens.

The next piece, which is also very important, is your audience selection. So when we look here, we can see our audience and who we select is going to change over time. This slide is primarily based on having engagement data from a prior sending platform. So if you do not have a prior sending platform, I suggest that you, first of all, definitely run your email addresses through a verification process, um, and then splitting those as best you can along the guidelines that I’m gonna give you in the following slides. It’s harder to do without prior engagement data. However, it can still be done successfully. In the case that you do have prior engagement data from another sending platform, we’re going to aim in those first three weeks to send to the most engaged subscribers. New subscribers are always engaged and anybody who has engaged with your emails or potentially if you’d like to include with your brand in general, if you have app information, if you have website information they made a purchase, then you can include those as well. So you want those subscribers with an opener click in the last thirty days. In weeks four through five, I suggest bumping this out to sixty days. And then in the late six, we go out to the last six months. So I don’t really suggest, and we’ll talk more about this as well, sending to people who are over six months out in engagement regardless. Um, even after IP warming is finished, there is no use in wasting your email sends on a stale subscriber. However, this does change based on your business practices. So, for example, if you are sending information about membership renewals or account renewals every year, um, then we could expect to maybe see low engagement out from that year. But we might still want to include those people who engaged last a year ago, a year and six months ago. Um, but make sure to not bring those people in until late in the game, until that week six or beyond.

Best practices for this is to not send to any audience that hasn’t engaged in over six months, like I just said. Um, the time frame for an unengaged audience depends heavily on your business practice. Again, discuss that internally. Um, really think about how long could it be before somebody reengages, and that makes sense. Don’t bump it out to two, three years, or all time just because you don’t wanna lose your your list. You feel like this list is valuable, and it is one of the most valuable tools we have. But just make sure to try to only send to those people who are very important and are most likely to interact with you. Again, I recommend to run those email addresses through some sort of validation system to ensure that they are not spam traps and they are valid emails. Spam traps do have email addresses that they put out there that do automatically go to a spam trap, so you need to make sure that you are not falling prey to any of those accidentally. We want to also remove any bounced email addresses throughout the process. I do this daily. I set up a very simple automation that will find all. Usually, I look for block bounces and potentially hard bounces as well because we do know that those are generally going to be bad email addresses, and I put those into an auto suppression. Now this is speaking MarketingCloud terms, but just find some way to suppress those records that have bounced.

Alright. IP warming timeline. This is a tough subject for a lot of people because a lot of times we’re on a strict timeline that we don’t want to expand it out as long as necessary. Make sure you give yourself enough time to successfully warm your IP and not fall prey to cutting it short and then being blocked. You’re gonna want to throttle sends over as many hours of the day as makes sense. Generally, this is gonna be something like eight hours if we start in the morning. So sometimes this would look like 250 people an hour depending on how small the list is you’re sending to, all the way up to a 100,000 an hour if you are, you know, up to 800,000 people you’re sending to at a time. By doing that, it does give the ESP time to recognize your emails and filter them into the inbox, and you won’t overwhelm the ESP with your emails. Six weeks is generally required for IP warming to be successful, sometimes longer if you have quite a large list, um, or a very unengaged list. So let’s make sure to give ourselves enough time to get this done. It’s not required to send messages every day or to the total volume allowed each day. So sometimes when you look online at IP warming guidelines, they’ll show you that day one, you can send 20,000 emails to Gmail. I do not recommend doing that. Um, it is possible. I would not. I would start much smaller than that and recognize that you have time to get this message out to your entire audience. You don’t have to do it all on the same day. Try not to take breaks where no emails are sent during IP warming. Um, you can take a day, two days. Um, try not to take much longer than that. It’s best to avoid weekends. The only reason I say this is because you may not have anybody there to monitor those sends. If you do, then feel free. Send on weekends. That might speed up your IP warming a little bit, um, as we are looking at thirty days of sending. Um, but make sure you have somebody there to monitor those and stop sending if something is going wrong. And lastly, send to the appropriate audience at the correct time. If there are not enough new and engaged subscribers for a time period, don’t include unengaged just to increase your numbers. And if you do, be very careful about how far out you go in that engagement period, um, especially up front. Those first two weeks, let’s really try to hammer home our engaged subscribers, and we might need to send them several emails and nothing to the unengaged group. Um, just make sure we’re not trying to shove people in there for fun.

I’m going to rush through the next couple of slides these are more as for you to reference later if you need them. These are the numbers that I like to send by day for the ESPs. So this is for any ESP. So for Gmail, I would send 500 on day one. Yahoo, 500 on day one. Hotmail, 500 on day one. Although Yahoo and Hotmail, I believe, are the same. But you want to kinda make those our Hotmail and Outlook. You want to make sure that you are sending to an ESP only a few at a time, and this is every day. So day one, five hundred, day two, five hundred. You may end up sending 5,000 total that day, but you want to make sure they’re segmented by those different domains that you’re sending to.

Alright, now we’re going to talk about how to bring it all together, and these again are just for your reference you can come back and look at these slides later. Um, this is an example of my week one planning. So I had counts of who was engaged in the last thirty days for all the major ESPs here that I cared about for this specific client. Because AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail have the most, we are going to be careful with these domains. We’re gonna split these out and treat them individually. For anybody else, any other domain, like Comcast there has 391. Right? We’re just gonna loop those into all others and not try to segment to specifically and send to just those 391 Comcast people. And here’s an example of that planning with my email schedule. So on Monday, I’m sending a total of 1,500, uh, 500 to each Gmail, AOL, and other, and it continues from there. This is how I like to set it up for myself so that I know who I’m sending to when. And down at the bottom I have those total remaining numbers so that I know week two is going to need to also send email one, and we’re gonna try to get through the remainder of that engaged audience in week two.

Alright. If you get blocked, just make sure to monitor your sends for several days. Watch for those block bounces. I tend to monitor on day zero, day of send, day one, and day three just to make sure that block bounces haven’t just appeared because that does happen. Um, If your block bounces suddenly increase and deliverability drops below 90%, then we need to take a moment, and we need to take five seconds to scream. I put that on here. You know, get a little angry about it, but that’s okay. Regroup. Uh, submit a case to Salesforce with the information about your mid, the IP, and the ESP that you think might be blocking you. They are very effective at helping you to get unblocked with those ESPs, so definitely reach out to them. Stop sending to this domain until Salesforce says you’ve been unblocked, and start IP warming over for that domain and go slower. So you’re going to want to rehash your calendar at that point, specifically for that domain. You can keep going with the others as usual. And lastly, don’t let your IP freeze up. I’ve said this earlier, I’m saying it again. Continue to send at least 100,000 emails per month to keep your IP warm. Stopping sends after IP warming can cause deliverability issues. And if sends are stopped for a long period of time, thirty days or more, the IP is going to need to be rewarmed. So ensure that you continue to send your regularly scheduled emails.

Alright, in summary, choose your emails wisely. Most engaging content is best. Send engaging content to engaged customers. Send to the right audience at the right time, so that engagement window. And don’t panic if something goes wrong. Take a deep breath, and start over. Thank you very much. I know I only left, like, a minute for questions. So if you have any questions, please put them in the q and a, and we can try to do that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So we do have a couple of questions, Amy. Um, I know we only have forty one seconds left, and it’ll kick us out. Yes. Um, so I think we can follow-up with these folks, um, after the event. Maybe we can shoot them a message. Um, I know, um, Vincent was wondering if we do create a new business unit that will live on a shared IP, um, and we would like to authenticate and begin using a new email sending domain, do we still need to warm the IP? So, um You

Speaker 0: would not need to if you already have a warm IP and you have a new BU, but it’s using the same IP address, you do not need to continue to warm that IP. It’s already warm. Now if you are increasing your sending volume, four seconds, then maybe you will. But Cool.