If you've recently purchased a domain so you can switch sending your marketing emails from a free email address, or if your business is going through a rebranding, it's important to warm up your new domain carefully.

Domain warming is the process of sending emails from a new domain—or an existing domain that hasn't been used to send emails for a while—in a way that helps it build a good reputation. Warming up your sending domain is essential to avoid issues with getting your emails delivered to the right inboxes.

In this guide, we'll talk about why domain reputation is essential and give you some helpful tips for warming up your domain.

Your domain's reputation is like a report card that shows how trustworthy your domain is in the eyes of mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. A good reputation increases the chance of your emails landing in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

Many things can affect your domain's reputation, such as

If your sender domain is brand new, inbox providers don't have enough information to determine your domain's reputation. This can initially impact the deliverability of your emails.

Also, if you have an existing domain but haven't emailed your subscribers in months—we know how it is when life happens—you need to gradually warm up the existing domain again to ensure the deliverability of your emails and rebuild your sender reputation.

When warming up your domain, there are a few things to remember.

When you first get a new domain, patience is important. Sending emails right away—although tempting—can raise red flags with mailbox providers, and they might think something fishy is going on.

Your domain might even get blocked if they see you sending emails within the first 24 hours of getting the new domain. It's best to wait 24-48 hours before sending any emails. Use this time to verify your domain with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.

Make sure you authenticate your new domain before sending emails from it.

In your Flodesk account, go to Account settings > Domain setup and click the “Verify now” button on your domain card.

You can use the automatic verification flow via Entri, available for most domain providers, or the manual verification steps to complete the steps.

Authenticating your domain via protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC helps check that your emails are legit, making your domain more trustworthy and increasing your sender reputation over time.

When you're ready to start sending emails, take it slow. Begin with a small number of emails and then gradually send more. This gradual approach helps avoid raising any red flags with mailbox providers.

Look at your email list to check what mailbox providers your subscribers use, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft (Outlook), or if they signed up via a domain email address on your list. Then, start by sending a low volume of emails to each group, focusing on the most engaged ones and gradually increasing the volume each day.

Learn how you can bulk select and bulk add your most engaged subscribers into dedicated segments here.

By gradually sending to highly engaged segments initially, you can avoid the negative impact of a single low-performing message on your overall deliverability. When using a new domain for email sending, these initial sends can significantly influence your reputation.

Pay attention to how well your emails are doing. Check the email open rate and click rate. Ask your subscribers in the email to reply back to you. Tell them to move the email from spam to their main inbox if it landed there and to add your new sender address to their contact list. Your goal is to get positive engagement with your emails and establish your new sender domain as a trusted sender.

For your first send, aim for open rates of above 30% if possible, and for the next 2-4 weeks, aim for 20% or higher. If everything looks good, you can increase the volume of recipients.

If your email open rates dip below 20%, continue sending to the current segment, but don’t increase the number of recipients. Carefully analyze your engagement data, your email content, test send your email to your personal mailbox and monitor its inbox placement.

Most people can expect their domain to have a good reputation in about 5-6 weeks of consistently sending emails. If you’re about to send only one email per month, this process could take much longer.

Note that there's no magic formula for how many emails you can or should send daily or weekly. If you have a large email list, you should send less than a thousand messages daily for the first few days through your new domain email address.

Although you can easily resend your emails to unopens, while you’re in the process of warming up your sending domain, do not use this feature just yet.

Subscribers receiving your email twice may mark it as spam which can negatively affect your sender reputation. Also, if non-openers don't engage with the second attempt either, it lowers the engagement rate, which can affect future deliverability of your emails.

Make sure it's easy for mailbox providers to see that your new domain is linked to your existing brand. Use things like your company logo and consistent messages in your emails to show that you're the real deal.

If you changed domains due to rebranding, learn more about how rebranding can affect email deliverability and ways to mitigate it here.

Google Postmaster Tools is a free tool that shows you how your domain reputation is doing in Gmail's eyes. It will tell you if your domain reputation is Red, Yellow, or Green, giving you the confidence to increase the sending volume or correct course as needed.

Additionally, Google Postmaster Tools help you monitor the number of spam complaints you have received each day on Gmail.

To keep your spam rate low, ensure it’s easy for users to unsubscribe to your emails and make sure you’re sending information which is relevant.

Learn how to set up Google Postmaster Tools.

Your domain's reputation is crucial for ensuring your emails get delivered. The above tips can help you ensure your new domain gets off to a good start and can be trusted by mailbox providers.