How to avoid the spam folder with domain warm-up?

If you are using new IPs or domains to send out marketing emails, that don't have previous sending history, you could end up in the spam folder.

Yes, even if you aren't technically a spammer. That is because if you are using new IP or domain and providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc., they may not know what to expect. Therefore, it's a good thing to warm-up the process first so that you can keep a healthy reputation for your domain.

Note: Before the warm-up process make sure you've cleaned your email list, by removing the contacts that unsubscribed or are inactive users.

Now, let us show you how to do precisely that in Loopify.

• Go to the Contacts app. 
• Export your contacts.
• Open the exported file containing all of your contacts. 
• Remove the unneeded fields or columns from the exported Loopify file. These columns are unneeded because this data already exists in the contacts and you only need the exported file to update your contacts with new values.
• Add a new column in your file, for example Warm-up, and add values to your contacts (day1, day2, day3, etc.)
• In our video, we have an example with 1700 contacts where 100 contacts will have day1, 200 will have day2, 400 contacts day3, and 1000 contacts will have day4 value.

The number of values you need to add depends on the number of contacts you use in your campaign. You could have much, much more contacts. But don't worry, you can start dividing your contacts with more values by following the domain warm-up plan: 

Dividing your contacts means, the first day you will send 100 messages, and the next day 200 and so forth. This process is slow but effective because if you start sending 1,000,000 messages aggressively at once, the email clients will register this as spam. And it's never a problem if you've missed out a day. 

• When you've added the values to your contacts, save the file and go back to Loopify.
• Create a new main segment called Warm-up.
• Add values in the segment according to your contacts file. The input type should be single-select.
• Now, import your previously edited contacts file. This process will update your already existing contacts with the new segment values. Make sure to map your new field with the Loopify field. It's also very important after mapping to choose the option Update existing contacts with the imported data.
• When you have successfully imported the file, check if all your contacts are correctly updated into the new main segment.

The next step is to create a flow campaign that will warm-up your domain. This Flow is to make sure that the first day only 100 emails will be sent, the second day 200 emails and so on. For our example, we will need four contacts blocks, four emails blocks and three wait blocks. Here's how to set it up:

• Add the 4 Contacts blocks (if you have 4 days under the Warm-up segment). Choose the right segment values for each Contacts block. The first Contacts block should contain day1 value, the second day2, the third day3, etc.
• Drop your Email block and connect it with the first Contacts block.
• Before connecting the other Contacts blocks with the Email block, add three Wait blocks, starting from the second Contacts block. The contacts in the first Contacts block (having no Wait block) will receive the email as soon as the campaign goes live. The contacts in the second Contacts block will receive the email the next day (set up by the Wait block). The contacts in the third Contacts block will receive the email after two days (again set in the Wait block) etc.
• Activate your campaign and your emails will safely start to be sent day by day.📧😊

If all of this seems like a lot of work well, we do have one more way to warm-up the domain by using sequence numbers. Check that out too! 

If you wish to learn more on now how to set up your own domain in Loopify go ahead and read the Can I add my own sending domain? article.