IP Warming!

IP Warming is as popular as “Global warming” for the techies in the Salesforce marketing cloud ecosystem.

Salesforce offers two different types of IPs to clients who want to implement Marketing Cloud Email Studio.

1. Shared IP : As the name says, the same IP address is allocated to multiple vendors.
2. Dedicated IP: A brand new IP address is allocated to a specific vendor.

As there is no concept of pre-warmed IP address, if organizations start sending bulk emails using the new dedicated IP, there is

high risk of ISPs blocking the emails, suspecting those emails as SPAM.

To build the sender reputation, it is necessary to gradually increase the send volumes from the dedicated new IP address in a strategic way. Salesforce help documentation also provides guidance on the approach based on various ISPs and the organization’s send volume.

For anyone new to SFMC Doamin, there will be a lot of questions around this particular process. The most important question is

Why should we consider dedicated IP over Shared IP?

High send volume:

1. You need to send at least 100k messages per month to support a dedicated IP address. Otherwise, you may have difficulty establishing an IP reputation with major ISPs.
2. If you’re sending 250 K or more messages per month, you must have a dedicated IP.
3. If you’re sending more than 2 million messages per day, you need more than one IP address. (Sending more than 2 million messages a day from a single IP can result in deferrals by major ISPs.)

Deliverability issues:

Reputation is negatively impacted by another sender using a shared IP. If one company has a bad reputation in a shared pool, all other senders in that same pool can be impacted.

 A dedicated IP address allows you to manage your own sending reputation

To summarize – IP warming is the process of gradually increasing the volume of mail sent by a new IP address. The end goal is to build up at least 30 days of desirable sending history so that ISPs have trust built on the mail coming from the new IP address.

The ramp-up period can take longer than 30 days for some senders and a shorter time for others based on the volume targetted. Factors such as your overall list size, list quality, send frequency, and subscriber engagement can influence the amount of time it takes for your IP address to be fully ramped up.