Email Outbound Engage FAQs
Does the platform restrcit sending notifications/emails to duplicates?
What are the prerequisites to run bulk email campaigns?
The yellow.ai will help in setting up a Bulk email campaign account. The following are the steps involved:
- Creating a bulk email campaigns account for the brand.
- Procuring a dedicated IP address for the brand's email campaign account
- Doing domain authentication and reverse DNS setup along with the brand's DNS team.
- Time taken for this activity: 7-10 working days.
Once the bulk Email campaign is setup, can we run bulk campaigns right away?
No. Unlike many channels like SMS, WhatsApp, we cannot send lakhs or thousands of emails from day one. Email is a highly regulated channel where the ISP internet service providers and the end-user's email clients (aka emailbox) screens for the reputation of the IP address from which the emails are sent from.
Hence, we need to spend considerable time in increasing the reputation of the IP address from which the bulk emails are sent. This process is called ‘IP Warming’.
What is an IP address?
Internet Protocol Address (shortly, IP address) is a unique numerical address that defines your location on the internet. Roughly, this is like your house address which is needed to locate you and your identity.
Each of internet-connected device will have an IP address. To know your local IP address, Google for What is my IP?, and you will get the answer.
What is IP warming?
IP addresses need to build reputation. The higher the reputation higher is the chance for the mails to be successfully delivered to the end users’ mailbox. To improve the reputation, we perform IP warming.
IP warming is the process of incrementally adding email volume to the new IP address over multiple days and weeks to build a positive sending reputation among the mailbox providers.
Mailboxes treat a new IP address with suspicion until they build a positive sending reputation.
Typically, it takes 4–8 weeks to achieve the highest deliverability (subject to vary based on email volume and engagement).
What are the tips for IP warm up planning?
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Start your email program with the email content that you feel will perform the best with respect to engagement (opens, clicks).
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Start your email program with the users that you know are most likely to open/engage with your emails (It could be your best users, favorite customers active on email).
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As you progress with the warm-up plan, keep adding 10-15% of your older user audience to your most engaging user segment that you started with.
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During the course of the IP warming program, we should be incrementally adding the audience size from the highest engaging users to the lowest, dull engaging users based on the historic experience.
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During the first two weeks, send emails to the most engage-worthy users. The brands could help with the audience.
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During the third and fourth weeks, we could include the audience users who have opened/clicked emails in last 60 days from your previous email program.
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During the first six weeks, we should avoid sending emails to the least engaged/ bounce-worthy users, spam-markers.
IP warm-up plan for new dedicated IP address (for enterprises with high-volume email program plans).
IP warm-up plan can tweaked based on the brand’s maximum volume expected to be sent. The thumb rule is that rushing up the IP warming process is not recommended. Going incrementally and steadily is the key.
What should we consider for IP warm-up plan?
- Different mailbox providers may delay the mail delivery, block the emails during the initial days. It is important to discover the bad user segments after each day and ensure to add the engage-worthy user base on a daily basis during the warm-up plan.
- IP warming is not only about the incremental increase in volume but also about the engagement (opens, clicks, bounces, getting marked as spam).
- Opens & clicks engagement positively impact the IP sending reputation.
- Bounces, invalid user email addresses, and spam reports negatively impact the IP sending reputation.
- To keep the engagement rate high, ensure to send emails only to the opted-in users.
- Begin your email sending program by sending an opt-in sign-up form. You can have email opt-in across your digital portfolio such as website, WhatsApp bots etc.
- Send only high-relevant content.
- Request the users to whitelist your email ID to deliver directly to ‘primary inbox’ instead of spam or promotions.
- As the list grows, remove non-engaging users.
What is a domain?
Computers are extremely fast. They can handle the IP addresses of the Internet-connected devices which are numerical. However, we humans have a lot of other things to remember, right? To bail you out from remembering the numerical IPs, comes the domain names.
Domain names are human-readable address. For example, yellow.ai, google.com, Yellow and Google are the domains. .ai and .com are called top level domains.
What is a sub-domain?
In the example docs.yellow.ai, docs is the subdomain of yellow.ai.
Are these domains taken for rent?
Yes, you cannot own domains. You can only pay and get the right to use it for the approved time (say 2 years) before renewal. If you fail to renew, this will be available for someone else to buy for a rent.
The place where you pay and get the domains are called 'Registrars'. For example, GoDaddy, Cloudflare (DNS names given are for example and not as a recommendation from yellow.ai) is a registrar from whom you can get domains.
What is DNS?
In short, Domain Name System (DNS) behaves like a translator. Whenever you type something like yellow.ai on the browser, DNS translates this to computer-friendly IP address and that's why the particular page gets opened.
Is warm-up process needed for SMTP-based transactional/update emails?
No. as this is high-context, relevant and non-bulk outbound type. Also, the SMTP is expected to be sending emails already.
When to use SMTP configuration?
SMTP configuration can be used when the purpose is to send 1:1 transactional/update email notifications through our Notifications API or Workflow campaign and not usually recommended for bulk promotional ones.