Email warm up establishes and protects sender reputation for an email account by gradually increasing sending limits. To ensure high deliverability and avoid spam filters, your IP address must be viewed as trustworthy and must be warmed up to build its reputation.

Once your email is warm, you'll need to take steps to keep it warm and maintain your reputation.

Why can't I send to all my customers right away?

When you first start using Dutchie's email marketing, you might wonder why you can't immediately send your grand opening announcement to all 10,000 customers on your list. Here's the simple answer: email providers like Gmail and Yahoo don't trust new senders yet.

Email providers need to view your IP address as trustworthy before they'll deliver your emails to customers' inboxes instead of spam folders. Email warm up establishes and protects sender reputation for an email account by gradually increasing sending limits. 

The good news: Dutchie automatically handles this process for you with our IP warm-up system.

What is an IP? Why warm it up?

An IP address is the unique identifier of your email domain. Email providers track this address and give it a reputation score based on your sending behavior. Your IP address’ reputation is crucial to your ability to send email at volume and not end up in the Spam folder. 

IP warm-up is the process of gradually building trust with email providers by:

• Starting with small email volumes
• Gradually increasing the number of emails sent each day

Dutchie manages this entire process automatically, so you don't have to worry about the technical details.

How Dutchie's warm-up works

We protect your sender reputation by setting daily email limits that gradually increase over your first 10 days. Here's exactly what happens:

Day	Maximum Emails
Day 1	50 emails
Day 2	100 emails
Day 3	500 emails
Day 4	1,000 emails
Day 5	2,000 emails
Day 6	4,000 emails
Day 7	8,000 emails
Day 8	16,000 emails
Day 9	25,000 emails
Day 10	35,000 emails

 

When you create a one-time blast campaign, on the Build content step you'll see your current daily maximum emails and how many emails you've sent out of that total.

You'll also see how many days it will take to send the email to all recipients based on the campaign’s audience size, current daily maximum, increases in the daily maximum over time, and other campaigns queued ahead of it:

 

Real examples

Scenario 1: Introducing Pay by Bank to all of your customers. You're announcing the ease of using Pay by Bank to your customers,, and create a campaign to send to 6,000 people on your list.

• What happens: Your campaign will complete by Day 6 (when your limit reaches 6,000)

Scenario 2: Weekly Deals Campaign You want to send weekly deals every Friday to 3,000 customers.

• Week 1: Campaign completes by Day 5
• Week 2 and beyond: Sends immediately on Fridays

Scenario 3: Multiple Campaigns You schedule a "New Edibles" campaign (2,000 recipients) on Day 1 and a "Flash Sale" campaign (1,500 recipients) on Day 2

• What happens: The "New Edibles" campaign starts immediately but takes multiple days to complete. The "Flash Sale" campaign waits in queue and won't start until the first campaign finishes.
• Better approach: Wait until Day 5 to send your “Flash Sale” campaign. 

Campaign queue system

Important: Your campaigns send one at a time, not simultaneously.

If you schedule multiple campaigns:

1. The first campaign starts sending immediately (up to your daily limit)
2. Additional campaigns wait in a queue
3. Each new campaign starts only after the previous one completes

Planning tip: Check your daily limit before scheduling time-sensitive campaigns.

Quick start guide for your first month

Week 1 (Days 1-7): Build your foundation

• Best campaign types: Welcome emails, Pay by Bank announcement, new customers, loyalty program invites
• Avoid: Large promotional campaigns, one-time discount blasts

Week 2 (Days 8-10): Expand Your Reach

• Include more customers: Add customers who've purchased in the last 3 months
• Campaign types: Weekly deals, new product announcements, educational content
• Daily limits: 16,000+ emails (you can reach most customer lists)

Week 3+ (Day 11+): Larger Marketing Power

• By day 11, your email limits will allow you to target larger audiences. It’s still important to keep in mind your customer size even though your IP is warmed up.
• Campaign types: Major sales, seasonal promotions, large-scale marketing

Automated campaigns: set it, and forget it

To maintain your IP reputation, set up these automated campaigns during warm-up:

• Welcome series for new customers
• Abandoned carts to encourage purchase completion. Use the Abandoned Cart tile in the campaign builder to dynamically render the specific products that a consumer left in their cart.
• Post-purchase follow-ups
• Upcoming birthday specials

These keep your IP active and engaged even when you're not actively sending marketing campaigns.

Staying Warm: maintain your reputation long-term

Email warm-up isn't a one-time setup. It's an ongoing commitment. The 10-day warm-up ramp gets you started, but your sending reputation requires ongoing maintenance.

Consistent, regular activity keeps your reputation healthy. Some tips to stay warm:

• Send consistently every week. Irregular patterns, like silence for weeks followed by a large blast can be a red flag to inbox providers and may cause your tier to drop.

• Hit your tier threshold at least once a week. To hold the 4,000/day tier, for example, you need to send 400+ emails in a single day at least once per week. Automated campaigns (birthdays, win-backs, post-purchase follow-ups) are the most reliable way to achieve this passively.

• Keep your list clean. Remove hard bounces immediately and suppress unengaged subscribers (no opens in 90+ days). High bounce and complaint rates accelerate tier decay.

• Prioritize engaged segments. Strong open rates reinforce your reputation. When in doubt, send to your most active customers before your full list.

• Honor all unsubscribes immediately. Continued sends to opted-out customers generate spam complaints, which directly damage your IP score.

• Watch your metrics weekly. A sudden drop in open or delivery rates is an early warning sign of tier decay. Don't wait until you're in the spam folder to investigate.

What does "Peak Level" and "Sending Tier" mean?

• Sending tier = the technical bracket that controls how many emails you can send per day 
• Peak level = the point at which your sending tier is high enough to reach your entire list in one day

As you progress through warm-up, your daily sending limit increases through a series of tiers. Your peak level is when you've reached the tier that can cover your entire opted-in list in a single day. Meaning you could email every customer without hitting a sending cap.

The larger your list, the higher the tier you need to reach peak. Once you're there, maintaining it requires consistent weekly sending. If you let your activity lapse for ~30 days, your tier can decay, drop below the peak and require rebuilding.

Reaching your peak level is the goal of the initial 10-day ramp. Staying at your peak level requires ongoing, consistent sending. Your tier is not permanent. It reflects your recent sending behavior. 

Common questions

Q: What if I have a time-sensitive promotion? A: Plan ahead! If you're on Day 3 but need to reach 5,000 customers, wait until Day 5

Q: Can I speed up the warm-up process? A: No - rushing can damage your reputation permanently. The 10-day schedule is optimized for long-term success.

Q: What happens if I don't send emails for a month? A: Your IP reputation can decay. You need to maintain consistency. This is where automated campaigns can help too. 

Q: My campaign is stuck in queue. What do I do? A: Check if you have another campaign still sending. Once it completes, your queued campaign will start automatically.

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• Learn more about Dutchie Loyalty and Marketing