Email IP Warm-up

When determining whether to accept or reject a message, ISPs consider the reputation of the IP address that sent it. One of the factors that contributes to the reputation of an IP address is whether the address has a history of sending high-quality email. Email providers are less likely to accept mail from new IP addresses that have little or no history. Email sent from IP addresses with little or no history might end up in recipients' junk mail folders, or might be blocked altogether.

When you start sending email from a new dedicated IP address, you should gradually increase the amount of email that you send from that address before using it to its full capacity. This process is called warming up the IP address.

The amount of time that's required to warm up an IP address varies between email providers. For some email providers, you can establish a positive reputation in around two weeks, while for others it may take up to six weeks. When warming up a new dedicated IP address, you should send emails to your most active users to ensure that your complaint rate remains low.

Using Amazon SES as the email gateway, we are able to immediately begin sending an email at higher volumes and SES will automatically distribute the volume, by inbox provider, between the dedicated IPs on the account and warmed IPs from a shared-pool. Over the subsequent days, SES will gradually increase the volume on the dedicated IPs and decrease the volume on the shared pool until the IPs are warm based on the target sending volume. (This is best done when you have a consistent, high, daily volume.)

Ideally we should know the date you want to first start sending emails to live customers, so that we can start the automated IP warming process in the Amazon SES gateway.

For more information on this process, please speak to your CSM.