By default, all Click customers send their emails via shared IP addresses. However, when sending large volumes of emails on a regular basis you may consider purchasing a dedicated IP address. The dedicated IP is available at an additional monthly charge and requires additional configuration. The benefits and configuration are outlined below and your Customer Success Manager can assist you in purchasing a dedicated IP.
How Beneficial are Dedicated or Shared IPs?
If a sender has enough volume (meets or exceeds the minimum requirement), sends at a regular cadence, and has good email sending practices, they may see an improvement in deliverability using dedicated IPs. On a dedicated IP, only the sender's email volume and data quality influence the IP reputations. Dedicated IP customers have 2 IPs for their email volume.
On the other side, if a sender has smaller volumes and doesn’t send at a regular cadence, they will see a positive influence from the established reputations and consistent volumes of the shared IPs. The reputation of the shared IPs can influence a sender’s deliverability, but it works both ways—if the sender has an issue that negatively influences their sending reputation the collective positive reputation of the shared IPs will minimize the damage, or if the shared IPs have a temporary reputational issue it will impact the senders deliverability for a short time. Shared IP customers have 4 IPs for their email volume.
How is a Dedicated IP Configured?
Once a dedicated IP package has been purchased, the Deliverability team will reach out to collect some information about your current email program, data sources, and domain requirements. Accounts using dedicated IPs are set up as a “whitelabled” account so that email appears to come from the customer and not Click.
Technical Information Needed for Configuration
- Domains used in the From Address.
- If you use more than one From Address, please provide all of the domains and designate which one is the default or most used domain.
- A Subdomain not currently in use and something unique to Click.
- cd.tomatogardens.com
- emails.tomatogardens.com
- market.tomatogardens.com
- e.tomatogardens.com
- This subdomain will only be visible in the email headers; it will not be visible to the normal email recipient.
- This subdomain can be anything that makes sense for your organization. For example, an organization named Tomato Gardens might use any of the sample subdomains below.
- A Subdomain for the email CNAME if one is not already set up.
Steps the Deliverability Team will take
- Once the domains are designated, the Deliverability Team will supply the DNS records that need to be set up on DNS under the customer’s domain.
- When the DNS records are created, the records will be verified. At this point everything needed for the account configuration is complete.
- The server changes will be made during the weekly change window (Thursday evening EST).
- Once the server changes are complete there are a few tests that we run on the Click side. After, we will request a window to apply the changes to the account when there aren’t bulk sends scheduled.
- Once the changes are applied to the account, we will ask that the changes are tested.
How does the IP Warm Up Process work?
IPs start with a neutral reputation—Inbox Providers won’t have enough data to decide if they trust your emails or not. Some will put part of the email volume in the inbox and the rest in the spam folder until they see recipients interacting with the emails.
The IP warm up period is usually 4–6 weeks. Senders start with low volumes and then if everything goes smoothly, they can double the volume each week.
Some important things to keep in mind . . .
- Senders will want to send to their best quality email addresses first. These are the customers that want to receive your email and will engage (open/click) with the email when they receive it. If you start with poor quality addresses, which result in invalid recipients or spam complaints, the Inbox Providers will think you are a spammer.
- Senders will want to send at a minimum 3 days a week. Send at as much of a regular cadence as possible. Sending 5 days a week is better than 2. You can split bigger sends over several days to accomplish this.
- If you can further segment by domain (Gmail, Yahoo, b2b) it will help as some domains are sensitive to new senders and need very small volumes at first.
The Deliverability team will discuss a warm up plan with you and provide guidance on schedules and volumes. During the 4–6 week period, the new IPs will be monitored for any issues.
Additional Details of Dedicated IPs
- A dedicated IP address does not change the speed of email processing.
- There are minimum volume recommendations for a dedicated IP. You should send at least 200K emails a week at a regular cadence because an IP needs consistent volume in order to maintain a reputation. For example, if you have one large send a month, a dedicated IP will not be the right choice. (200K email messages per week equates to roughly 900,000 per month, and 10 Million per year.)
- A dedicated IP address starts off with an unknown sender reputation, and you must "warm" the IP address by gradually building the volume of email through consistent Email Sends over the first 4–6 weeks, until the full regular volume of email is attained. For example, if you expect to send 1 million emails per month, start by sending 10,000 on day 1, and increasing the volume every day by 30-50% until full volume is reached.
- Sender reputation, and therefore deliverability, with a dedicated IP address is entirely your responsibility. While our deliverability team can offer guidance on establishing and maintaining your IP address's sender reputation, you will not benefit from the established quality of ClickDimensions' shared pool of IP addresses.
- Each customer using a dedicated IP actually gets 2 dedicated IP addresses. Volume is load balanced between the 2 IPs to keep them both warm.
- Dedicated IPs are monitored for blacklisting 24/7. The Deliverability team will notify you if your IPs have been blacklisted by a major list and assist with the delisting if available.
- You will continue to benefit from the Service Protection that is built into our platform.