Before You Dive In
This article is one step from our Master Help Guide: All About Email Marketing. We recommend starting with the visual walkthrough video and examples inside the Master Help Guide before diving into the technical setup below.
Each Master Help Guide acts as your project plan - teaching you the feature, laying out the steps in the right order, and linking to every resource you’ll need along the way.
This guide is perfect if you want to:
Learn best practices for sending emails from a new or dedicated domain for the first time and want to ensure strong deliverability.
Protect your domain reputation, avoid spam flags, and gradually build trust with email providers.
Get step-by-step guidance on email verification, unsubscribe compliance, batch sending, and following the staged warm-up process.
Understanding Email Domain Warmup
If you've just connected your dedicated sending domain, this is likely the first time you've ever sent emails through your own actual domain (most email providers actually send your emails through a shared domain, not your own) - so it's critical to slowly warm up your domain to prevent getting flagged for spam.
Even if you're only sending to tiny list (even just 50 people) you should make sure the emails are validated first and that you follow best practice shared below. If just 5 of those emails happened to be invalid, that would be a 10% bounce rate which could get your domain immediately flagged and a 24hr suspension applied.
A slow and steady email warm up will ensure you protect your domain reputation, improve your deliverability, and end up with emails that always land in the primary inbox instead of the junk folder. It's a process that takes a little bit of patience over your first few weeks, but will bring you a massive return in the near future!
Step 1: Turn On Email Verification & Unsubscribe Links
There is a small charge per email verification, and if turned on, the system will repeat the verification process every 3 months. Please take this into account when looking at your billing and charges.
From the Ivorey™ main menu, go to [Settings] then > [Business]
Scroll down towards the right you'll see [General] section
We highly recommend you tick the following email settings. Hover over the information symbol to understand what each setting means and how it works.
'Verify Email Address when first email is sent to a new contact' means that the contacts email address will be verified the first time you send them an email from Ivorey.
'Make Email compliant by adding an Unsubscribe link in your email' means that once this is turned on, you will be able to drag and drop the email footer element into your emails and the unsubscribe link will be automatically added by the system
If you are using one of Ivorey's pre-designed email templates, you will see the unsubscribe link is already included in the email footer.
Step 2: Drip Send Your First Emails
When you send or schedule your first email, you'll see a Batch Schedule feature at the top of your screen. We highly recommend using this to gradually warm up your sending reputation.
Set the batch schedule to send 20 emails or less, every 5 minutes.
On your first day, do not send more than 1,000 emails in total.
You can gradually increase the volume with each new email campaign you send.
The more emails you send, and the more people engage with them, the stronger your domain reputation will become and the more you'll land in the Primary inbox.
Step 3: Follow The Domain Warm Up Stages
When sending emails from a brand-new domain, you can’t go straight from 0 to 10,000 emails a day. You need to warm up the domain slowly so email providers learn to trust you. Ivorey’s™ warm up tool handles this automatically by ramping up your daily sending volume in fixed stages.
For new email domains: Warmup starts automatically when the domain is verified
For existing email domains: Warmup must be manually started.
Go to Settings > Email Services > SMTP Service > Dedicated Domain and IP.
Click Start Warmup on your domain
Each “stage” of warm up has a set daily send limit. Once that daily limit is hit, warmup pauses until the next day. Once you hit the full limit = you move to the next stage. Once you reach Stage 15, warmup is complete.
You won’t move to the next stage until the full limit is met. If you don't follow the warm up best practice - your emails could land in spam, bounce, or get delayed. More importantly, your domain reputation could be damaged, so it's always best practice to follow this staged approach and earn yourself a strong email reputation for the long-term.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it important to warm up my domain?
Why is it important to warm up my domain?
Warming up your domain protects your deliverability, prevents spam flags, and improves open rates by establishing trust with email providers.
How do I start warming up my dedicated sending domain in Ivorey™?
How do I start warming up my dedicated sending domain in Ivorey™?
For new domains, warm-up starts automatically after domain verification. For existing domains, go to [Settings] > [Email Services] > [SMTP Service] > Dedicated Domain and IP, then click Start Warmup on your domain.
Do I need to verify my contacts before sending emails during warm-up?
Do I need to verify my contacts before sending emails during warm-up?
Yes. Email verification helps reduce bounces and protects your domain reputation during the warm-up process.
Need Help?
Hit the support chat widget inside Ivorey - we can:
Walk you through any of the steps
Troubleshoot anything that’s not working
We’re here and ready to help via the chat widget in the bottom right of your Ivorey™ account. Or if you are looking for done-for-you support, you can browse our current services here 🤍