Email deliverability guide
Understanding email deliverability is one of the most important factors for good inbox placement and avoiding unnecessary spam-related issues. To ensure that your setup is properly configured for your emails send-outs, there is some important setup and preparations that must be done from your side.
Follow the steps below to ensure your setup is correct. You should consider all these steps to be mandatory to ensure that you have set up your account up for the best possible email deliverability.
Step 1 – Go through the course “Introduction to Email Deliverability”
This online training course will give you the basics of emails deliverability. We strongly recommend that you go through this course; it serves as a foundation for your warmup phase before launch and helps to keep you in the loop after the launch, helping you monitor and act when needed.
After completing the course, you will have a better understanding in the most essential parts of email deliverability, and this will give you the base you need to understand your email deliverability trends.
Step 2 – Authenticate your sender domain(s)
Follow this guide to ensure that you have authenticated the sender domain(s) you will be using for sending out emails from Engage. Besides authenticating the sender domains, don’t forget to:
Have a DMARC-policy in place
Set up postmaster@ and abuse@ addresses for your sender domain
Read the guide here.
Step 3 – Plan your email warmup
You have most likely sent mails from your sender domain and sender address for some time. This means that your sender domain has an established sender reputation.
As you are switching to a new platform, you’ll need to warmup your sender reputation again. Since you will now be sending from a different technical setup it is highly recommended that you follow the warmup processes mentioned here to help building up a good sender reputation.
The warmup process can be done in different ways, and how you do it depends on your database volume and your sending pattern:
If you send less than one million emails per month, you will benefit from sending from Voyado’s Shared IP-Pool. You will be assigned to the IP-pool automatically.
If you send more than one million emails per month, you will be assigned a dedicated IP-address that only you will send from.
In the following pages, you will find instructions regarding how to plan and follow through a warmup period. The instructions are our recommendations to help you achieve the best possible warmup. Whilst they are not mandatory, we strongly advise that you follow the recommendations to ensure that the warmup is properly done. This will help your email deliverability, both short- and long-term.
Warmup planning - case 1
This is for when your monthly send-out volume is less than a million emails per month, and your contact database has less than 80 000 contacts with email marketing consent.
In this case, the recommended new contact allowance per week are:
Week 1 | Max number of new contacts sent to from Engage | 15 000 |
Week 2 | Max number of new contacts sent to from Engage | 30 000 |
Week 3 | Send to all |
The table above shows the recommended maximum number of new contacts you should send to form Engage each week. For the recommended maximum send-out frequency per week, consult this section: “Send-out Frequency and batchwise sendout during the warmup period”.
Warmup planning - case 2
This is for when your monthly send-out volume is more than a million emails per month or your contact database has more than 80 000 contacts with email marketing consent.
For this case, we suggest two different variants: “Activity based warmup” and “Randomized split warmup”. Please read through both variants to decide which version suits your organization the best. If possible, and you have the relevant data available, Voyado recommends “Activity based warmup”.
Activity based warmup
To ensure that you have the highest possible engagement level, and send to the best possible addresses, we recommend that you divide up your send-out groups and send-out volumes per week according to the tables below:
Group | When the contacts last opened an email |
|---|---|
Warmup Group 1 | 0 - 7 days |
Warmup Group 2 | 8 - 14 days |
Warmup Group 3 | 15 - 30 days |
Warmup Group 4 | 31 - 60 days |
Warmup Group 5 | 61 - 90 days |
Warmup Group 6 | 91 - 120 days |
Warmup Group 7 | 121 - 150 days |
Warmup Group 8 | 151 - 180 days |
Warmup Group non-active | 181 days and higher |
Week | Max number of new contacts mailed from Engage |
|---|---|
Week 1 | 25 000 |
Week 2 | 50 000 |
Week 3 | 75 000 |
Week 4 | 100 000 |
Week 5 | 125 000 |
Week 6 | 125 000 |
Week 7 and every week after | 100 000 |
The table shows the recommended maximum number of new contacts you should mail per week from Engage during the warmup. See also “Send-out Frequency and batchwise sendout during the warmup period”.
We also recommend that you work with what are called “The Primary Warmup” and “The Secondary Warmup”, which are explained in the next section.
The primary warmup
Here, you will focus on Warmup Groups 1-8. You’ll start with Warmup Group 1 and add more and more volume as you get further into the warmup period.
The weekly sending allowance is stated under “Recommended new contact allowance per week” and we strongly suggest that you follow this for optimal deliverability and proper warmup of your IP-address.
Warmup Group | When the contacts last opened an email | Amount |
|---|---|---|
Warmup Group 1 | 0 - 7 days | 32 000 |
Warmup Group 2 | 8 - 14 days | 42 000 |
Warmup Group X | ... | ... |
Week 1 | Warmup Group 1 | 25 000 |
Week 2 | Warmup Group 1 (7 000) + Warmup Group 2 (42 000) | 49 000 |
Week X | ... | ... |
The secondary warmup
You might have heard that recipients who haven´t opened any email in the last six months are a potential risk for your email deliverability. This is true – inactive contacts are a direct risk for your deliverability. It can even be argued that inactivity over the previous 90 days is enough to be a potential risk. This all depends on how often you send and how you segment your send-outs.
That said, for many businesses, even 180 days of inactivity may not be long enough to merit complete exclusion from future email send-outs. The recipients may be interacting in physical stores but might not be so active in the email channel. Or they may be “seasonal customers”. What, then, should you do here?
It’s all about balance and planning and hence the “Secondary Warmup Group”.
The idea behind this is to gradually move the contacts in and continuously monitor the effect of each group. Some suggestions to optimize this are:
Before you start sending to this group, ask yourself if you might benefit from a re-activation program for these contacts, like giving some incitement for inactive contacts to re-engage in your email program. You could, for example, use an automation flow in Engage. If you choose to start sending to these contacts, our recommendation is that you add them in small groups (maximum 5% new inactive contacts per week). This will give you good control in understanding how these contacts are performing.
Even after re-engagement activities, you’ll most likely still have some inactive recipients. Just as above, ff you choose to start sending to these contacts, our recommendation is that you add them in small groups (maximum 5% new inactive contacts per week).
Even after these steps, you might still have contacts that are not re-activated. If these contacts are still eligible for communication from you, try alternative channels. Maybe SMS is a better communications channel for them?
Sendout groups and new contact allowance per week (randomized split)
If you don’t have access to “Last Open Date” for each recipient, our recommendation is that you split the list up randomly and send according to the recommended send-out volumes below.
With this variant, you’ll send emails to both your active and inactive contacts from the beginning. It is therefore important to have a slower and more careful pace.
Week | Max number of new contacts mailed from Engage |
|---|---|
Week 1 | 10 000 |
Week 2 | 20 000 |
Week 3 | 40 000 |
Week 4 | 60 000 |
Week 5 | 80 000 |
Week 6 | 100 000 |
Week 7 and every week after | 80 000 |
The table above shows the recommended maximum number of new contacts you should send to form Engage each week. For the recommended maximum sendout frequency per week, consult this section: “Send-out Frequency and batchwise sendout during the warmup period”.
Use your current platform in parallel with Engage to maintain your reach
As you have a limited send-out volume in Engage during the warmup period, it is likely that you’ll want to reach out to the rest of the groups from your current platform. And it’s perfectly fine to do so – see below for an example of how the split between the platforms can look like:
Week 1 | New contacts emailed from Engage | 25 000 |
Contacts emailed from your current platform | 40 000 | |
Week 2 | New contacts emailed from Engage | 40 000 |
Contacts emailed from your current platform | 0 |
Week 1 | Warmup group 1 from Engage | 25 000 |
Warmup Groups 2 - 8 | 275 000 | |
Week 2 | Warmup group 2 from Engage | 75 000 |
Contacts emailed from your current platform | 225 000 |
Note
Ensure that all unsubscribed contacts from your current platform also are unsubscribed in Engage before the first send-out of each warmup week.
Send-out Frequency and batchwise sendout during the warmup period
Sendout frequency
Newsletter* frequency can be kept as normal during the warmup period if the frequency is 3 sendouts per week or less. If the sendout frequency is higher, we recommend that you keep the sendout frequency to maximum 3 newsletters per week from Engage during the following periods:
The first three weeks (if sending less than a million emails per month)
The first six weeks (if sending more than a million emails per month)
* Bulk sendouts to whole or large portion of our total database.
Batchwise delivery
For mails sent during the warmup period, we recommend that you split up your send-outs into batches (4 batches/1 hrs in between each batch) using Engage’s “Batchwise Delivery”.
Even after the warmup period, we recommend that you continue to use “Batchwise Delivery”, the recommendation now being to send in at least 4 batches/30 mins in between each batch.
Monitoring your sendouts during the warmup period
Follow your open rate (and also your click rate trend) trend to understand potential effects of email filtering at the ISP:s. While this is extra important during the warmup period, it is also very important for your day-to-day business. Please refer to these sections: