Warm up a domain

A domain that never sent mail has no reputation. Providers are cautious with unknown senders, so a large first campaign is likely to be throttled or sent to spam. Warming up means starting small, with your most engaged recipients, and growing each day.

#Plan

1. Start with people who want your mail. Customers, recently active users and people who just signed up. They open and reply, which builds a good reputation.
2. Send small and steady. A rough schedule for a new domain:

Slow down if you see more bounces or complaints, or delivery_delayed events. It is better to take two weeks than to burn the domain. 3. Keep the content stable. Do not change From name, domain and style while warming up. 4. Watch the numbers. Hard bounces under 2%, complaints under 0.05%: see Bounces and suppressions.

#How this works on usend

• Domain reputation is yours. It follows the domain you send from, not usend. A new subdomain starts fresh, which is why warming up matters each time you add one.
• Platform IPs are warmed by usend. On the platform's own IPs, usend caps the daily volume of a newly added IP and raises the cap over time. If you send more than the cap in a day, the excess waits and is sent from the next day on rather than being lost.
• Your plan's daily limit also applies: the Free plan allows 100 emails per day. See Account quotas and limits.
• Dedicated IPs need their own ramp-up. See Dedicated IPs.

#Tips for big lists

• Split a large broadcast into segments, and send the most engaged segment first.
• Use scheduling to spread sends across the day.
• When moving from another provider, run the old and new in parallel and shift traffic over a couple of weeks.

#Signs of trouble