Due to the critical nature of the warmup process, we want to highlight the importance of selecting the right emails to use during the warmup process.

Email List for Warmup Plan

One of the most critical parts to a warmup is gathering email addresses that will receive a campaign during the warmup. A warmup plan doesn’t only depend on gradually increasing send volume, it also depends on engagement from subscribers. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) need to know that an email list is full of subscribers that opted in and receiving content/emails that they were promised.

Engagement is an important part of warming up an IP/domain; it makes sense to start the reputation of a new IP/domain by first reaching out to the most engaged subscribers.

After Apple MPP was launched in September 2021, open rates became distorted by machine opens vs human behavior. As a result, the behavior of a recipient clicking an email became even more important than who opened an email. Therefore, craft your list of engaged subscribers based on those who clicked on a campaign vs those who just opened a campaign.

Criteria for building an optimal email subscriber list for the warmup process

• Provide a list of emails that have recently engaged (clicked on a campaign) in the last 6 months.
  • If the “clicked engaged” list is less than 50% of the entire database size, please provide a secondary list of subscribers who clicked 7 months to 1 year ago, and then greater than 1 year ago.
• The list should exclude all known OTA domains (i.e., guest.booking.com or agoda-messaging.com). OTA domain emails may appear valid, but these emails are either opened or clicked on by a machine, recycled frequently or will hard bounce.
• The list should include valid emails.

What if I don't have any previous email engagement?

If you have no engagement data from your previous platform:

• Please advise us, as we can suggest a slow and conservative warming plan.
• You will monitor email metrics very closely during IP/domain warming. Be ready to pause or slow down if you see heavy deferrals, blocks, hard bounces, or spam complaints.