Warm-up with SmartPush - How SmartPush Helps You with Domain Warm-up

After completing domain authentication, pause before sending emails. Warm up your domain first to improve the sender's reputation! 

Read this article to learn how SmartPush can help you complete the tedious domain warm-up process and achieve higher returns in email marketing.

What is domain warm-up?

Warm-up is a process to build trust with internet service providers (ISPs) by gradually increasing the sending volume and improving your domain's reputation at ISPs (Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo). The higher your domain's reputation score obtained from the ISP, the higher the proportion of emails that enter the inbox, making your emails more visible to recipients and increasing open rates.

This is the key to establishing a reputation with ISPs for new sending domains. If you start sending many emails without warming up, your emails will likely go straight to the spam folder.

When is domain warm-up necessary?

• New authenticated domains
• Domains migrated from other platforms but with a historical average delivery rate of less than 20%
• You need to reach more than 20,000 contact emails

Advantages of warming up the domain

• Warm-up can help establish a good reputation for your domain and improve your deliverability;
• During the warm-up period, you can monitor and improve your email contact list; 
• After the warm-up, you can pay attention to the key sending situation of ISPs, allowing you to understand your domain’s reputation better.

How to automate domain warm-up with SmartPush

Depending on the quantity and quality of emails, it takes several days to several weeks to warm up a new domain. The more the emails and the lower the email quality, the longer the warm-up time it will take. During the first few days, you need to select as many active recipients to send emails to. By analyzing data feedback, you can determine the next warm-up plan and gradually expand it to all recipients.

Set yourself at peace as SmartPush provides a complete solution to help you complete such a tedious warm-up process!

Preparations before warming up:

1. You must have completed SmartPush domain authentication
2. Validating your contact emails is recommended.
3. Start warming up when the number of contact emails reaches 20,000; and
4. If you already have over 10,000 contact emails and your business is growing rapidly, we suggest you start warming up.

Start warming up:

1. Go to [Deliverability] - [Warm-up Plan]. Click Start warming-up to enter the Warm-up page.

2. On the “Warm-up Plan” page, you only need to select the domain to be warmed up, the segment to be excluded during the warm-up progress, and the email domain to be sent beyond the current warm-up progress.
   1. Domain to Be Warmed-Up: A domain that has completed the authentication and needs to be warmed up.
   2. Excluded Segment: The recipient will not receive emails during the warm-up process. This can be a group of inactive customers or customers who wish to be kept from being notified. Please note that the warm-up plan cannot be generated if the number of excluded recipients is 0.
   3. Email Domain to Be Sent Beyond the Current Warm-up Progress: Since the size and type of segment of each warm-up are generated through an AI algorithm, if you expect to send emails to recipients beyond the warm-up limit, you can send them with a backup email domain. You can also choose not to set a backup email domain; the recipients beyond the warm-up limit will not receive your email.

• Click Generate warm-up plan after the setup.

3. Generation and monitoring of warm-up plans

1. The warm-up plans for each store differ due to the differences in ISP and store email quality.
2. SmartPush’s powerful AI algorithm capabilities have already generated a warm-up plan for each store.
3. The warm-up plan will also be optimized based on the effectiveness of the previous warm-up progress so that each warm-up meets the ISP’s sending requirements.
4. The algorithm of this warm-up plan is currently not open to merchants due to its complexity. You can observe the domain’s email-sending performance when warming up. 
5. When the warm-up level has reached or is close to the sending volume you need, given that you have reached an ideal reputation level in each ISPs, you can end the warm-up in advance.

4. Warm-up task setting

1. After generating the warm-up plan, you can set up a warm-up task.
2. You can create the task by going to [Deliverability] - [Warm-up Plan] - [Set up task] or the email campaign settings in [Campaign]. 
3. When a domain is warming up, the “Warm-up segment” option will appear in the recipient menu, and the email “Warm-up” tag will appear in the sender address. Select the warm-up segment and the domain for creating a warm-up campaign.

3 tips to use on SmartPush: 

1. For merchants who send emails to all customers without segmentation, you should add the “warm-up segment” to the recipient and select the domain that is being warmed up for every email campaign.

• The email volume will be calculated by the AI algorithms and sent via the warmed-up domain first.
• Any remaining emails will be sent via the backup channel set with the warmed-up domain to ensure all emails are sent successfully.
• If your warm-up domain does not have a backup channel, you can end the warm-up in advance and start it over. With our AI algorithms, you do not need to worry about starting from zero.
• Be rest assured that your contacts will not be repeatedly reached.

2. For merchants that require segmentation for each sending campaign and need to view campaign data reports:

• You can copy an email template you want to send and set up a warm-up task to send separately.
• Please note that if you add the warm-up segment and domain directly in the segmented campaign, the data of the warm-up segment will affect the data report.

3. For merchants that have already sent warm-up emails but still need to set up campaigns on the same day: You can exclude the warm-up segment from the recipient to avoid multiple emails being sent to the same customers. 

Notes:

• The warm-up segment is automatically generated by AI algorithms and updated daily at midnight based on the store’s time zone.
• If you select the warm-up segment as the recipient, you must select the email with the “warm-up” tag as the sender address. You cannot email the warm-up segment multiple times within 24 hours.
• Automated emails can be sent using the warming-up email address without being affected by the warm-up limitation. Therefore, you may find relevant data generated before starting the domain warm-up task. 

Last but not least

Warming up is the first step in ensuring the sender's credibility. After the domain warms up, you must comply with the sending requirements. Otherwise, your warm-up efforts may fail. Your bounce rate should remain below 5%, and your spam email complaint rate should be kept below 0.1%.