“If what they say is, “Nothing is forever,” then what makes love the exception?”

–     André Lauren Benjamin aka André 3000 of OutKast

Love is such a succinct term, yet it’s so broad as well. You can love another person, you can love your favorite food, you can love the weather, you can love bad movies, you can love that one song, you can love yourself, you can love, well, love.

Well, love (as they say in the UK), one thing you can count on is people spending money ahead of and on Valentine’s Day. And more people will be spending that money online, whether for gifts or experiences, food delivery or anything else that fits the bill, rather than going out for a date night, making online marketing for Valentine’s Day more important than ever this year.

The data backs this up. While last year saw a significant spike in spending during Valentine’s Day (more on that in a moment), this year is projected to still reach $21.8 billion dollars in total revenue, right in line with 2020 spending and continuing the annual uptick.

One reason for the uptick in spending in 2021? People went out for date night! In 2021, after a year of pandemic, people felt “safer” going out, and did so, to the tune of an extra $1.5 billion over what’s expected this year. The other big increase last year? Jewelry, which also makes sense because it tends to go hand-in-hand with Valentine’s Day and “feeling good”, and the trope has always been giving a significant other jewelry at a restaurant, hence both going up (probably ?).

Check out this graph below, again from the National Retail Federation, that shows how spending went up in every category in 2021, but especially for the “An evening out” and “Jewelry” categories.

This year, not so much. But it’s right in line with 2020, which if you <shudder> recall, that was right before things really hit hard in March. So in February 2020, we all blissfully went out, but not at a higher rate, just a normal rate. This February, going out for Valentine’s Day is expected to be significantly lower, more so than any year in the past decade, so spending is going to be even more virtual this year, making online marketing campaigns essential.

Which is where you come in! Or rather, where we both come in, because we’re here to give you the best ideas for Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns to put you in position for success by giving your fans some love by showing them your Valentine’s Day gifts.

Think about the wide breadth of people in the target audience here, and you’ll see that no matter what your industry, there’s someone for you!

Maybe Valentine’s Day was invented by a greeting card company. Maybe Cupid is real. Maybe we all just like feeling a little love.

Here’s a snippet of the people who might willingly participate in this holiday…

Some archetypes celebrating Valentine’s Day (or even going anti-Valentine’s season):

Have a significant other? You’ll want to show appreciation, affection, love, even a small gesture for that someone special, because you don’t want them (or you) to feel left out.

Just started a relationship? You want them to know you’re excited about this new beginning, and its potential.

Single? Sometimes treating yourself (Treat yo’self) is the way to go, and it’s nice to have an excuse to pick up a little something as a pick-me-up. A single person could even turn it into a group occasion by encouraging people to take part in your offer, too.

Not into Valentine’s Day? Come out with your group and share an experience together with a great discount, holiday or not! Have a beer here, share a pizza, etc.

Recent heartbreak? Then it’s time to get on and get over it, and what better way then with new gear, new clothes, a new car even!

Single, but with your eyes on someone? This is that moment to buy them something that will let them know your true feelings.

It’s a money maker. You don’t need to have romantic products to still offer relatable content during the Valentine’s Day season, so shake to it and make any number of Valentine’s Day campaigns a reality.

You can use our full complement of tools to get it done, too: Targeted emails, popups, social media ads, retargeting campaigns, 

You have the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for the people, now you just need them to think of you and relate your brand with Valentine’s Day.

Your approach can suit your products and offers to just the right people, you just gotta let a little love in.

Our 7 Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaigns

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 1 – Email, of course! Discount promo! Rewards! Delivery on time!

Brand: Island Soap Candle Works

Subject line: Still time to find something special for Valentine’s Day

1. This email packs it all in, without being too wordy or cumbersome. And, it doesn’t even use the header to say something about love or Valentine’s Day. The play on “time is running out” is always great, and they deliver on the fact of letting you know there’s time, but it’s running out, by stating the date you need to order by in order to receive the gift on time. There’s the lovely discount, 15%, shown nice and big, and the always great link to more products CTA, plus social media icons to learn and see more if you want! It’s a great example, and we’ll show you how to repurpose this Valentine’s Day content into other marketing strategies as well.
2. Something like this can see your sales spike after delivery, because interested folks might think, “oh yeah, I need to still buy something, and fast!” They see the great discount, they see the email with time to spare to get their order in (this was sent on Feb. 4), and since it’s a gift pack, it saves people time by giving them a ready-to-go option.
3. Send out an email to your list with a strong discount, a recommended product or three (or gift pack), and let them know that if they order by Date X, they will receive it in time for Valentine’s Day (notice that little disclaimer, “weather and other restrictions permitting”? Perfect) and you’re ready to go. Did we mention that creating an alluring email is super easy with the GetResponse drag-and-drop email creator, complete with tons of professionally designed templates?

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 2 – Hook their heart with social media ads

1. Take the idea above and turn it into a social media campaign – if this image, discount, and offer popped up as an Instagram or Facebook ad, it would serve the same purpose but to a different (and maybe even bigger) audience. Imagine someone scrolling, and all of a sudden it hits them – Valentine’s Day is coming! Don’t underestimate people’s ability to procrastinate, or forget, things such as holidays and gifts. They see your ad, they are reminded they’re still without a gift, and there’s your offer all neatly bundled, on sale, and ready to arrive in time.
2. Get eyes on your perfect gift offer using your social media platforms, and most importantly, get you sales. Plus, now they know you’ll deliver the goods when it comes to gift-giving time, and they might give you a follow, or even subscribe to your mailing list (don’t forget to ask for their sign up in return for that sweet discount!). Now, you’ve got a repeat buyer, and someone who things of you fondly because you helped them in a pinch.
3. Repurpose your image so it fits into a social media ad (hey, lookie there, GetResponse has a tool that can help you create – and deliver – that ad). Then, add copy that fits the character count, and a great CTA (as simple as “Order Today!”) and send it to targeted, segmented audiences. You can run this ad for a few days even to rack up sales.

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 3 – SMS campaign

1. People check their phone, especially when an SMS comes across. Basically, if a notification pops up, they’ll see it. And what notification is basically universally left on even if others are turned off? SMS.
2. Put you in your audiences pockets, and hands, giving them instant access to your deal. Now, they don’t even have to be browsing or shopping or checking email or scrolling social, and they’ll still get 1. A reminder about the holiday and 2. A great, instant offer. Plus, with GetResponse SMS, you can create a link that takes them directly to your page so they can order immediately.
3. Start an SMS campaign! Ask visitors for their phone number, maybe through a popup in exchange for discounts, where you have two fields for email and a phone number, or use your email list to let your loyal customers know you have SMS-only Valentine’s Day deals happening now, and ask them to opt-in and give you their data.
4. A couple sample SMS texts that could be used based on that same ad by Island Soap & Candle Works:

Forgot about Valentine’s Day? Don’t sweat, there’s still time! Order today for 15% off our lovely gift packs, and order by Feb. 8 to get your gift right on time! Shop now [link] (don’t forget opt-out copy)

Avoid heartbreak and get your Valentine’s Day gift now! Order by Feb. 8 to make sure your gift it’s in their hands for the special day, with 15% off for you! Order now [link] (opt-out copy)

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea for 4 – Signup forms & popups

1. Again, imagine a customer browsing and the furthest thing from their mind is Valentine’s Day, when your signup form pops open and widens their eyes, giving them that “Aha!” moment. You present them an offer, with a signup box for a discount, and now they’re signing up to your email list (becoming a long-term customer) in exchange for a discount, plus they see what great gift ideas you have.
2. Builds trust and loyalty, as a business that is thinking ahead, being thoughtful, plus saving them money. You’ll grow your email list, sell the items you are looking to move, and maybe even get someone in the spirit so they come back to you again.
3. Glad you asked! Create a signup form for your website or landing page, where you can house your form, with these handy dandy creators.
4. This email came from signing up for their list. And it’s from a local grocery store, showing you that anything can be turned into a Valentine’s Day idea, and you don’t have to be a nationwide brand to play the game. They gave their email address, and got special Valentine’s Day offers right there.

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 5 – Keep It Simple, Silly (and reel them in)

1. Someone bought from you before, but hasn’t been back in a while. Or, they bought something from you unrelated, but they fit the profile of what you want to sell for Valentine’s Day.
2. Put you back in their mind, and get a sale.
3. Segment your audience, and send them different messages.
4. Check out how simple this email is, sent out to pet owners who bought something from this shop, and gave their email address. It’s a simple idea, based on the color scheme of the holiday, with no heart or love related items there. Plus, it’s for redemption in-store only, which means the brand used online marketing to get people in the store, where they might browse and buy more than they came for.

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 6 – Give that love a nudge with marketing automation

1. So, you’ve sent that email or SMS, but no love, no click. That’s ok, because you’ve got something up your sleeve – an extra bonus!
2. As scorned lovers say, “Give me another chance!” Well, you’ll give yourself a second and even third chance to get that sale with this tactic.
3. With marketing automation, you can send multiple emails targeted to specific segments, all set up to run automatically! The first email goes out on Day X, and after a few days if a specific action happens (or doesn’t happen), it triggers email No. 2. Let’s say the first email offers them 15% off, but they don’t bite the apple, then the second follow-up email you send can offer an extra gift with their purchase, because who doesn’t like free stuff? Maybe it’s something special for them, so when they buy something they also get a treat. Still didn’t open or click? Then a third email can be sent out a few days later, maybe this time with a playful subject line so it’s upbeat and funny instead of pushy, and this time, offer them an increased discount, or two free gifts, your call.

Valentine’s Day marketing campaign idea 7 – Super segmentation

1. Now that you’re using marketing automation, you can get granular if you want! Segment your existing customers based on gender, or age, or location, whatever data you have, you can use.
2. As proven, men and women shop and spend differently for Valentine’s Day, so if you have products or offers that can be even slightly catered to one audience or another, this gives you a shot at giving more personalized suggestions, and an even greater chance at getting a sale.

3. Send two emails, for instance, one to your male audience that shows gift ideas for them to buy their significant other, and another to your female audience doing the same. Hell, you can even go against the grain and send “Galentine’s Day” emails to your female segment (if you’re not familiar with the idea, made popular by the stellar show Parks & Recreation, check out more here) and then you are getting two chances at capitalizing on the seasonality. You could even market your products as showing self-love or self-care, not even needing to make it about the gift giving part of Valentine’s Day, but more about “Treat yo’self” (another Parks & Rec goodie!).

You could create a segment for your most loyal customers as well, and make an extra-special Valentine’s Day gift email for them that says “Thank you” and shows them some extra love by offering this same free gift in another way.

Love and sales are in the air

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, even as an idea, shows that nobody is alone even when they are alone. People band together, so whether your customers are into love or not, into being in a relationship or not, there’s an idea out there for you, to give to them.

Get your free GetResponse trial today and put the perfect pair together = your Valentine’s Day marketing ideas plus the optimal tools to complete the match.

Email marketing and marketing automation, website builder and social media ads. You can reach everyone, everywhere, no matter your audience, and deliver timely, relevant content fit for this holiday.

Go on, get started now, you’ve got just enough time to put your Valentine’s Day marketing ideas to use, with GetResponse’s lovely suite of tools – with a totally free plan (as well as a 30-day trial for premium features) – ready to be the arrow to your Cupid.

Let’s talk about email deliverability. In a perfect world, every time we hit that “send” button, 100% of our recipients receive 100% of our content up until the day they consciously choose to unsubscribe from it. Then why do so many email marketing platforms take particular pride in having 99% or even 98% deliverability? Shouldn’t 100% be the golden industry standard? 

Enter sender reputation. Based on numerous factors such as the number of messages sent, your average bounce rate, or the quality of IP associated with your domain. In order to achieve the highest deliverability, you would want to have a positive sending reputation and keep your domain’s IP in check. And that’s where we start talking about IP warming. 

Read more about email deliverability here

If you’re trying to make sense of IP warmup for your business, this guide is for you! We’ll explain exactly what it is and why you would (or wouldn’t) need it. We’ll also go over 5 best practices to get you through the IP warming process.

As a result, you should expect to hit the best deliverability rate among your contacts and, thus, significantly improve the effectiveness of your entire email marketing strategy. 

Let’s start with the basics.

What’s an IP address?  

IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is the set of rules governing how data is sent online. These rules require all devices, routers, and websites to have their own unique address so that information can be sent between them — similarly to how the postal service requires street addresses and zip codes for mail delivery. 

Specifically, an IP address is a string of four sets of numbers separated by periods (e.g., 32.156.74.201). An IP address can be public (internet-based) or private (in-house or local network). 

Dedicated vs. shared IP addresses

A new IP address can be exclusive to the sender, which is known as “dedicated”, or it can be shared with other users. Wondering which one is best? We usually recommend shared IP addresses for low-volume senders who send a small number of emails to a modest list of subscribers. 

Using a dedicated IP address, on the other hand, is a good idea for higher volume senders with more consistent sending frequency. With dedicated IPs, you can focus on building a strong reputation over time, making sure your emails reach customers’ inboxes.  

What’s IP warming?

In a nutshell, new dedicated IP addresses have no sending history — they’re cold. This makes them seem suspicious to receivers like ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and lands them in the dreaded spam folder. 

So, IP warming refers to the warm-up process of a new IP address so that it is trusted by receivers. You can think of it as an extra step in building credibility with the ISPs the same way you use link building to build credibility for your domain rating for SEO.  

Why would you need IP warming?

If you’re using a new, dedicated IP address for email marketing, such as newsletter.example.com, you need an IP warm-up plan. Without it, your emails may look like spam to Internet Service Providers and won’t stand a chance of making it to the recipient’s inbox. 

Here’s a quick glimpse behind the scenes of email marketing technicalities: An ISP detects a new email sent from the cold IP address. As it has never seen this domain’s IP address before, the ISP automatically suspects spam. In order to protect the users, the brave ISP throttles email delivery. 

As a result, if you send to 100,000 users right off the bat, the ISP might only deliver the email to 5,000 of those users over the first hour. The consequences could be disastrous for some of the time-sensitive marketing campaigns. 

During this hour, the ISP monitors engagement metrics like open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and spam reports for the emails it did allow sending. If the metrics are poor, the ISP might choose to relegate the remainder of emails to spam folders instead of inboxes. 

What is more, if this pattern continues, the ISP could make a tough call and blacklist your IP address for good, meaning all of your emails will go directly to the spam folder of your users‘ inbox.

The only time you don’t need IP warming is if you’re using a shared IP address. 

Not sure if you are ready to tackle the IP warmup process on your own? With GetResponse MAX you get access to Assisted IP Warmup and a dedicated Account Manager!

Assisted IP Warmup

Maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns with our real-data study!

Download guide

IP warming best practices

Now that we know what IP warming is and why you need it, let’s take a look at some of the proven strategies that can get you off on the right foot if you choose to warm up your dedicated IP by yourself. 

1. Start by choosing an IP warming strategy 

There are two main strategies you can use to approach IP warmup: standard IP warming or assisted IP warming. 

Standard IP warmup 

Standard IP warmup is essentially the DIY approach. With this strategy, you start by sending small volumes of emails, and gradually increase the amount you send each day. During this stage, it’s critical that you demonstrate the real value of your content by only sending highly relevant and permission-based emails. 

This approach helps you to slowly build your positive sending reputation with the ISP and must be done before they can trust you with bulk mailings. If you choose this approach, it’s a good idea to create a schedule to follow for the first month, outlining exactly how many emails to send each day, to what audience, and with which purpose.

Assisted IP warmup

While standard IP warming is definitely an effective strategy, it’s time-consuming. That’s why many email service providers offer some type of automated or assisted IP warming to jumpstart the process. 

For example, qualifying senders using GetResponse MAX are eligible for our Assisted IP Warmup service. With it, we’ll set up a threshold for your dedicated IP to send, automatically adjusting as it progressively builds up your sender reputation. 

If you need to send more messages than the established threshold allows, we will make sure they are deployed automatically from our high-quality shared IP pool. This way, you’ll be able to warm up your dedicated IP gradually for it to be ready to stand on its own.  

Example use-case: You are sending 10,000 emails a day. Our Assisted IP Warmup would start by sending 1,000 from your new IP address and 9,000 from the shared IP pool. Then, it would gradually increase the amount sent from the new IP and decrease the amount sent from the pool until it’s all being sent from your new dedicated address. 

This speeds up the whole process and allows you to send millions of emails from day one without compromising your sending reputation. 

2. Carefully maintain a good sender reputation 

Sender reputation is based on the relationship between a sender and a receiver (typically represented by ISPs). The better your reputation the higher your deliverability rate will be, and vice versa. 

As you could’ve guessed, the best way to boost your sender reputation is to actively monitor factors that affect deliverability. These include but are not limited to keeping an eye on the following metrics: 

• How many messages you send and how often
• What percentage of your messages get flagged as spam 
• How many (if any) of your receivers blocklist your emails 
• Do any of your emails land in spam traps 
• Customer engagement metrics like bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, etc.

3. Send the most engaging content possible

Speaking of metrics like open rate and click-through rate, during the IP warmup stage, it’s crucial to make sure that the content you are sending is genuinely relevant and engaging to the recipient. 

The more emails your customers open the better your sender reputation becomes. If your emails are ignored (or worse, flagged), ISPs will knock you for it and it will take much longer to warm up the address. 

Here are 5 tactics to get more engagement in less time: 

1. Add personalized, subscriber-specific content to your emails

Automated, personalized emails have an average open rate of 44% and a click−through rate of 10%. Use custom fields and tags to collect valuable information about your customers. Then, fill your contact cards with useful data to improve the relevance and personalize your email content.

Learn how personalized solutions drive higher ROI with our Forrester case study!

2. Use social proof in your emails to build trust

It’s human nature to seek out the opinions of others before making a decision. That’s why regularly using customer testimonials can generate 62% more revenue for your business. 

GetResponse customers can use the social proof section featured in the templates to add testimonials to their emails with ease. 

3. Encourage subscriber action early on

Emails with a single call-to-action (CTA) increased clicks by 371%. So, it’s a good idea to design your emails with a specific CTA in mind and design your email template in such a way, that the CTA attracts users’ attention. Highlight it with a different color, create a branded button, or use a graphic-based CTA to maximize conversions.

4. Make sure your email looks great on all devices

Mobile devices account for 34% of message opens 47% of message clicks. So, don’t forget to optimize your email templates for mobile in order to increase conversions and improve overall performance. 

5. Get interactive with your email content

People pay more attention to video than any other type of content. In fact, emails with links to the Vimeo hosting platform have an average 39.67% open rate and 8.83% click-through rate.

Unfortunately, not every email automation tool allows for video content to be directly included in the email body, so it’s worth investing in those that do. 

With that, let’s return to our best practices to warm up IP addresses.

4. Keep your email list squeaky clean 

Even if you create the most engaging content on the planet, it’s not going to do you any good if you send it to an invalid or spam email address. In fact, it’s going to do a lot of harm. At the end of the day, your email strategy is only as good as the contacts it is aimed at.

Not every address signed up to your contact list is actually worthy. In fact, you’ve probably gathered quite a few spam, invalid, or dangerous email addresses. These undesirable contacts can cause low open and click-through rates, negatively affect your deliverability or result in increased bounce rates — ultimately downgrading your sender reputation.  

Apply these two strategies to keep your list as clean as possible: 

Regularly clean out low-quality and invalid emails 

While it sounds like a lot of work, thanks to the growing popularization of email marketing automation tools, there are plenty of services that can take care of email verification and validation for you. 

Use a confirmed double opt-in process

We always say email list quality beats quantity every time. But we meet many marketers who are scared to use confirmed opt-in. They worry it will make their list smaller or make people mad about having to go through an extra step. 

However, our data suggests otherwise. When you compare the average email marketing results by industry with the use of double opt-in by industry data, you can see that industries that use confirmed opt-in more often usually outperform those that don’t.

Still skeptical? This article goes into more detail on why it’s worth using double opt-in. 

5. Segment your marketing and transactional emails

Many mailbox providers now advocate that you separate your marketing emails from your transactional emails in order to maintain independent sending reputations and deliverability rates.  

If you’re not too familiar with the term “transactional email,” it refers to a one-on-one message that’s sent in response to a customer action and contains specific account information. Examples include order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications, and more. 

It’s critical that your transactional messages make it to the customer’s inbox since they’re often waiting for them to arrive. And this is where segmenting comes into play. 

By creating separate subdomains for your transactional emails and your marketing or promotional emails, you protect your ability to keep sending transactional messages even if you run into issues with your marketing email deliverability. 

Segmenting also helps troubleshoot issues in the future because you can isolate which campaigns or data sources contributed to reputational damage.

IP warmup FAQs

IP warming is a complicated subject and can be hard to wrap your head around. Here are a few more answers to the frequently asked questions on the subject. 

How do you warm up an IP address?

In a nutshell, you warm up an IP address by sending a small amount of high-quality, permission-based emails and gradually building up to bulk mailings. 

Do you need to warm up a shared IP?

One of the biggest benefits of a shared IP is exactly the fact that you don’t need to warm it up as it has a continual pool of users. 

However, the downside is that other senders may potentially affect your own sending reputation. Since you’re not the only party contributing to your domain’s reputation you don’t have full control over it. 

Conclusion

Hopefully, you’re feeling more confident and informed about IP warmup for your business. Remember, that if this process seems a little too complex for you, you can always opt-in for the Assisted IP Warmup with GetResponse MAX and benefit from bulk sending without having to wait for your domain to build up its sender reputation. 

Let’s talk about email deliverability. In a perfect world, every time we hit that “send” button, 100% of our recipients receive 100% of our content up until the day they consciously choose to unsubscribe from it. Then why do so many email marketing platforms take particular pride in having 99% or even 98% deliverability? Shouldn’t 100% be the golden industry standard? 

Enter sender reputation. Based on numerous factors such as the number of messages sent, your average bounce rate, or the quality of IP associated with your domain. In order to achieve the highest deliverability, you would want to have a positive sending reputation and keep your domain’s IP in check. And that’s where we start talking about IP warming. 

Read more about email deliverability here

If you’re trying to make sense of IP warmup for your business, this guide is for you! We’ll explain exactly what it is and why you would (or wouldn’t) need it. We’ll also go over 5 best practices to get you through the IP warming process.

As a result, you should expect to hit the best deliverability rate among your contacts and, thus, significantly improve the effectiveness of your entire email marketing strategy. 

Let’s start with the basics.

What’s an IP address?  

IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is the set of rules governing how data is sent online. These rules require all devices, routers, and websites to have their own unique address so that information can be sent between them — similarly to how the postal service requires street addresses and zip codes for mail delivery. 

Specifically, an IP address is a string of four sets of numbers separated by periods (e.g., 32.156.74.201). An IP address can be public (internet-based) or private (in-house or local network). 

Dedicated vs. shared IP addresses

A new IP address can be exclusive to the sender, which is known as “dedicated”, or it can be shared with other users. Wondering which one is best? We usually recommend shared IP addresses for low-volume senders who send a small number of emails to a modest list of subscribers. 

Using a dedicated IP address, on the other hand, is a good idea for higher volume senders with more consistent sending frequency. With dedicated IPs, you can focus on building a strong reputation over time, making sure your emails reach customers’ inboxes.  

What’s IP warming?

In a nutshell, new dedicated IP addresses have no sending history — they’re cold. This makes them seem suspicious to receivers like ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and lands them in the dreaded spam folder. 

So, IP warming refers to the warm-up process of a new IP address so that it is trusted by receivers. You can think of it as an extra step in building credibility with the ISPs the same way you use link building to build credibility for your domain rating for SEO.  

Why would you need IP warming?

If you’re using a new, dedicated IP address for email marketing, such as newsletter.example.com, you need an IP warm-up plan. Without it, your emails may look like spam to Internet Service Providers and won’t stand a chance of making it to the recipient’s inbox. 

Here’s a quick glimpse behind the scenes of email marketing technicalities: An ISP detects a new email sent from the cold IP address. As it has never seen this domain’s IP address before, the ISP automatically suspects spam. In order to protect the users, the brave ISP throttles email delivery. 

As a result, if you send to 100,000 users right off the bat, the ISP might only deliver the email to 5,000 of those users over the first hour. The consequences could be disastrous for some of the time-sensitive marketing campaigns. 

During this hour, the ISP monitors engagement metrics like open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and spam reports for the emails it did allow sending. If the metrics are poor, the ISP might choose to relegate the remainder of emails to spam folders instead of inboxes. 

What is more, if this pattern continues, the ISP could make a tough call and blacklist your IP address for good, meaning all of your emails will go directly to the spam folder of your users‘ inbox.

The only time you don’t need IP warming is if you’re using a shared IP address. 

Not sure if you are ready to tackle the IP warmup process on your own? With GetResponse MAX you get access to Assisted IP Warmup and a dedicated Account Manager!

Assisted IP Warmup

Maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns with our real-data study!

Download guide

IP warming best practices

Now that we know what IP warming is and why you need it, let’s take a look at some of the proven strategies that can get you off on the right foot if you choose to warm up your dedicated IP by yourself. 

1. Start by choosing an IP warming strategy 

There are two main strategies you can use to approach IP warmup: standard IP warming or assisted IP warming. 

Standard IP warmup 

Standard IP warmup is essentially the DIY approach. With this strategy, you start by sending small volumes of emails, and gradually increase the amount you send each day. During this stage, it’s critical that you demonstrate the real value of your content by only sending highly relevant and permission-based emails. 

This approach helps you to slowly build your positive sending reputation with the ISP and must be done before they can trust you with bulk mailings. If you choose this approach, it’s a good idea to create a schedule to follow for the first month, outlining exactly how many emails to send each day, to what audience, and with which purpose.

Assisted IP warmup

While standard IP warming is definitely an effective strategy, it’s time-consuming. That’s why many email service providers offer some type of automated or assisted IP warming to jumpstart the process. 

For example, qualifying senders using GetResponse MAX are eligible for our Assisted IP Warmup service. With it, we’ll set up a threshold for your dedicated IP to send, automatically adjusting as it progressively builds up your sender reputation. 

If you need to send more messages than the established threshold allows, we will make sure they are deployed automatically from our high-quality shared IP pool. This way, you’ll be able to warm up your dedicated IP gradually for it to be ready to stand on its own.  

Example use-case: You are sending 10,000 emails a day. Our Assisted IP Warmup would start by sending 1,000 from your new IP address and 9,000 from the shared IP pool. Then, it would gradually increase the amount sent from the new IP and decrease the amount sent from the pool until it’s all being sent from your new dedicated address. 

This speeds up the whole process and allows you to send millions of emails from day one without compromising your sending reputation. 

2. Carefully maintain a good sender reputation 

Sender reputation is based on the relationship between a sender and a receiver (typically represented by ISPs). The better your reputation the higher your deliverability rate will be, and vice versa. 

As you could’ve guessed, the best way to boost your sender reputation is to actively monitor factors that affect deliverability. These include but are not limited to keeping an eye on the following metrics: 

• How many messages you send and how often
• What percentage of your messages get flagged as spam 
• How many (if any) of your receivers blocklist your emails 
• Do any of your emails land in spam traps 
• Customer engagement metrics like bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, etc.

3. Send the most engaging content possible

Speaking of metrics like open rate and click-through rate, during the IP warmup stage, it’s crucial to make sure that the content you are sending is genuinely relevant and engaging to the recipient. 

The more emails your customers open the better your sender reputation becomes. If your emails are ignored (or worse, flagged), ISPs will knock you for it and it will take much longer to warm up the address. 

Here are 5 tactics to get more engagement in less time: 

1. Add personalized, subscriber-specific content to your emails

Automated, personalized emails have an average open rate of 44% and a click−through rate of 10%. Use custom fields and tags to collect valuable information about your customers. Then, fill your contact cards with useful data to improve the relevance and personalize your email content.

Learn how personalized solutions drive higher ROI with our Forrester case study!

2. Use social proof in your emails to build trust

It’s human nature to seek out the opinions of others before making a decision. That’s why regularly using customer testimonials can generate 62% more revenue for your business. 

GetResponse customers can use the social proof section featured in the templates to add testimonials to their emails with ease. 

3. Encourage subscriber action early on

Emails with a single call-to-action (CTA) increased clicks by 371%. So, it’s a good idea to design your emails with a specific CTA in mind and design your email template in such a way, that the CTA attracts users’ attention. Highlight it with a different color, create a branded button, or use a graphic-based CTA to maximize conversions.

4. Make sure your email looks great on all devices

Mobile devices account for 34% of message opens 47% of message clicks. So, don’t forget to optimize your email templates for mobile in order to increase conversions and improve overall performance. 

5. Get interactive with your email content

People pay more attention to video than any other type of content. In fact, emails with links to the Vimeo hosting platform have an average 39.67% open rate and 8.83% click-through rate.

Unfortunately, not every email automation tool allows for video content to be directly included in the email body, so it’s worth investing in those that do. 

With that, let’s return to our best practices to warm up IP addresses.

4. Keep your email list squeaky clean 

Even if you create the most engaging content on the planet, it’s not going to do you any good if you send it to an invalid or spam email address. In fact, it’s going to do a lot of harm. At the end of the day, your email strategy is only as good as the contacts it is aimed at.

Not every address signed up to your contact list is actually worthy. In fact, you’ve probably gathered quite a few spam, invalid, or dangerous email addresses. These undesirable contacts can cause low open and click-through rates, negatively affect your deliverability or result in increased bounce rates — ultimately downgrading your sender reputation.  

Apply these two strategies to keep your list as clean as possible: 

Regularly clean out low-quality and invalid emails 

While it sounds like a lot of work, thanks to the growing popularization of email marketing automation tools, there are plenty of services that can take care of email verification and validation for you. 

Use a confirmed double opt-in process

We always say email list quality beats quantity every time. But we meet many marketers who are scared to use confirmed opt-in. They worry it will make their list smaller or make people mad about having to go through an extra step. 

However, our data suggests otherwise. When you compare the average email marketing results by industry with the use of double opt-in by industry data, you can see that industries that use confirmed opt-in more often usually outperform those that don’t.

Still skeptical? This article goes into more detail on why it’s worth using double opt-in. 

5. Segment your marketing and transactional emails

Many mailbox providers now advocate that you separate your marketing emails from your transactional emails in order to maintain independent sending reputations and deliverability rates.  

If you’re not too familiar with the term “transactional email,” it refers to a one-on-one message that’s sent in response to a customer action and contains specific account information. Examples include order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications, and more. 

It’s critical that your transactional messages make it to the customer’s inbox since they’re often waiting for them to arrive. And this is where segmenting comes into play. 

By creating separate subdomains for your transactional emails and your marketing or promotional emails, you protect your ability to keep sending transactional messages even if you run into issues with your marketing email deliverability. 

Segmenting also helps troubleshoot issues in the future because you can isolate which campaigns or data sources contributed to reputational damage.

IP warmup FAQs

IP warming is a complicated subject and can be hard to wrap your head around. Here are a few more answers to the frequently asked questions on the subject. 

How do you warm up an IP address?

In a nutshell, you warm up an IP address by sending a small amount of high-quality, permission-based emails and gradually building up to bulk mailings. 

Do you need to warm up a shared IP?

One of the biggest benefits of a shared IP is exactly the fact that you don’t need to warm it up as it has a continual pool of users. 

However, the downside is that other senders may potentially affect your own sending reputation. Since you’re not the only party contributing to your domain’s reputation you don’t have full control over it. 

Conclusion

Hopefully, you’re feeling more confident and informed about IP warmup for your business. Remember, that if this process seems a little too complex for you, you can always opt-in for the Assisted IP Warmup with GetResponse MAX and benefit from bulk sending without having to wait for your domain to build up its sender reputation.