Overview
It is essential to warm your infrastructure any time you make updates to your DNS records, such as whitelabeling your sending domain.
The basic process is as follows:
- Turn on high engagement flow emails
- Begin sending campaigns to engaged segments
- Monitor your performance
We cover each of these topics in the sections below.
Turn on high engagement flow emails
Welcome Series, Abandoned Cart and Browse Abandonment emails are three types of flow emails known for getting high engagement. Set these up and have them running on the first day you begin using your new whitelabeled domain. If you've been sending any win-back or re-engagement flows, turn these off during the first couple weeks of your warmup to ensure that only highly engaged mail is being sent from your new domain.
Begin sending campaigns to engaged segments
Once you've turned on your engaged flow emails, begin sending campaigns periodically to engaged segments. For your first send, aim for open rates above 30%. Getting an open rate this high will likely require that you send to a segment of anyone who has opened, clicked, or recently opted-in in the last 30 days.
For subsequent sends, and as long as you're getting open rates above 20%, you can create a similar segment and relax the engagement criteria to 60 or 90 days. Continue with this strategy for a couple of weeks, and then further relax your engagement criteria to 120 or 180 days. As a best practice, avoid sending emails to subscribers that have been on your list but not opened or clicked in the last six months. Continuing to send to inactive subscribers will put you at risk of having your mail bulk moved to the spam folder for ISPs like Google and Hotmail.
If you've been using Klaviyo for at least a couple of months, ensure that you're creating and using engaged segments. If you're brand new to Klaviyo and coming from another platform, remember to include engagement data from your previous email provider in your engaged segments.
If you're having trouble building your engaged segments, please contact our Success Team with details including a link to the engaged segment you're building, the prior ESP you've migrated from, and the list in your account that subscribers are added to once they've opted in.
Your new whitelabeled sending domain is a clean start, so your initial sends have a higher impact on determining your sending reputation. Sending to highly engaged segments helps ensure your reputation will not suffer from a one off email that doesn't perform as well as your normal sends.
Using a conservative schedule that increases daily is the best way to ensure a solid sending reputation. A rule of thumb is to aim for open rates of 20% or higher, unsubscribe rates less than 0.2%, and spam complaint rates less than 0.08%. Keep in mind that these specific numbers will vary per sender.
Monitor your performance
These three items will help you monitor your performance as you warm your sending domain.
- Review flow analytics - checking back periodically on your flow's open, unsubscribe, and spam complaint rates will help you gauge the engagement with these emails.
- Monitor campaigns using the trends report - this report will show you changes over time in all the important email engagement metrics. In particular, keep an eye on the graph showing Marked as Spam and Hard Bounce rates, and make sure to look into campaigns that were responsible for any spiky behavior.
Learn more in our guide on monitoring your deliverability and email performance.