How to warm your sending domain in Uppush

When warming up your sending domain with Uppush, the goal is to gradually build a strong sender reputation and ensure your emails consistently reach the inbox. This step is essential when you move from another email service, start sending from a new domain, or haven't sent campaigns for a long time.

First, determine whether you need a full domain warming process or just a platform-introduction phase. During warming, always prioritize sending to highly engaged segments to maintain strong open rates and protect your domain reputation.

Import your historic engagement data and create segments such as 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, 120-day, and 180-day engaged subscribers. Start with a small campaign — ideally under 10,000 recipients — to ensure healthy performance.

Your initial campaigns should aim for an open rate above 30%. If your open rate drops below 20%, avoid increasing your sending volume and keep sending only to your most engaged subscribers.

You can also use Uppush’s smart batch-sending methods to handle large lists effectively. After your domain is fully warmed, you may activate high-engagement automations such as the Welcome Flow and Abandoned Cart Flow, especially if they have historically shown good performance.

Continue monitoring your analytics, including flow trends and campaign reports, to adjust your strategy. Avoid launching high-risk flows such as re-engagement or Product Release flows until your domain warming is fully complete.

You will learn

Learn about how to warm your sending infrastructure in Uppush. Warming your sending infrastructure trains inbox providers to view you as a good sender, and is essential any time you move to a new email service provider.

Before you begin

Before you begin warming up your sending domain with Uppush, make sure you understand that every new sending domain must go through a gradual warming process. This helps build a strong sender reputation and ensures your emails land in the inbox. Simply follow the recommended warming steps in this guide to increase your sending volume safely and maintain healthy engagement.

Guided warming

If your store is using a new sending domain, Uppush will guide you through the standard domain warming process. As you gradually increase your sending volume, Uppush may display recommendations inside your dashboard to help ensure your sending behavior matches the correct warming stage. If your campaign target is too large or includes low-engagement subscribers, Uppush will notify you and recommend sending only to your most engaged audience so your domain can warm up safely and effectively.

Please note that if you qualify for Uppush’s warming guidance but do not send any email campaigns for an extended period, the system will stop showing warming recommendations. Once these notifications are dismissed, they cannot be reactivated. However, you should still continue warming your domain by following the recommended steps in this guide to protect your sender reputation and maintain healthy inbox placement.

Migrate historic engagement data

If you are warming up your domain after moving to Uppush from another email service provider, it is important to include your historic engagement data. This helps you create accurate engaged segments and ensures you only send to subscribers who have recently interacted with your brand.

By doing this, you introduce your new sending domain to mailbox providers in a positive way. Sending first to your most engaged subscribers signals healthy engagement and reduces the risk of reaching contacts who may no longer be interested, helping protect your sender reputation during the warm-up phase.

Create engaged segments for sending campaigns

Sending to highly engaged segments over time helps to prevent any single low-performing message from damaging your overall deliverability. If you are using a brand new domain that has never been used in sending email, remember that these initial sends can greatly impact your reputation.

Create engagement-based segments at 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180 days. These segments will guide your sending schedule, starting with the 30-day engaged group. Avoid sending to inactive subscribers, as this increases the risk of your emails being marked as spam by mailbox providers such as Gmail or Outlook.

If you’re new to Uppush or migrating from another email platform, make sure to import your historic engagement data so you can build these segments accurately.

During the warm-up process, if you attempt to send a campaign to an audience larger than the recommended limit, Uppush will notify you and suggest reducing the recipient count to protect your sender reputation. For your first campaign, we recommend sending to fewer than 10,000 recipients. As you continue sending and your domain warms up, this recommended limit will automatically increase, and Uppush will adjust its warnings accordingly.

Send campaigns to engaged segments

As you start to engage your 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180 day segments, you will want to aim for the open rates listed in each section below. However, it’s important to note that open rates may vary per sender and industry, so your focus should follow the guidance below along with attaining as high as possible engagement for your specific business.

30 day segment (initial warming and daily sending)

For your first send, aim for open rates of above 30% if possible. Getting an open rate this high will require sending to a segment of anyone who has clicked in the last 30 days, or those who subscribed within the last 15 days.

Be conservative in your sending during this time and strive for as high of engagement as possible. For the first two weeks, focus on sending to the 30 day engaged segment. As long as your open rates remain above 20% you can relax the engagement criteria to 60 during weeks 3 and 4. After four weeks of sending with at least 20% open rates, you can relax the engagement criteria to 90 days. Continue with this strategy for two weeks at a time, and then further relax your engagement criteria. Your optimal engagement timeframe will vary depending on your individual business needs.

If your email open rates dip below 20%, continue sending to the current engagement segment, but pause ramp up to the next engagement segment. This may be a sign that your reputation is being negatively affected and you may need to strengthen your sender reputation.

60 day segment (for sending up to 3 times a week)

After two weeks of sending to a 30 day engaged segment and consistently seeing high engagement, you can broaden your audience to a 60 day engaged segment as long as this doesn’t substantially increase the size of your sending list. Remember to stay conservative with the number of email sends during this time. Make sure your open rates stay above 20%. If they fall below, return to your 30 day segment.

90 day segment (for sending up to 2 times a week)

If you are seeing good results with your segment using a 60 day engagement window, you can move to a 90 day engaged segment instead. Again, make sure open rates are 20% or higher, and if not, then tighten your timeline.

120 day segment (for sending weekly)

After sending to your 30-90 day engaged audiences for a few weeks, relax your engagement criteria to 120 or 180 days. Again, strive for high open rates above 20%.

180 day segment (for sending monthly)

If you are seeing good results with sending to your more recently engaged segments, you can expand the segment to 180 days. Tighten to 120 days or lower if engagement falls below 20%.

Turn on high engagement flow emails

Once you have created and sent to all your engaged segments, it’s now time to turn on your automations or flows. It’s critical that you only turn on flows that have historically performed well.

There are four key email flows you should focus on during the warm-up period, as they typically generate strong engagement:

• Welcome series • Abandoned cart • Abandoned checkout • Browse abandonment

These flows usually have high open and click rates, making them ideal to activate as your sending domain begins warming up.

Determining your high engagement flows

We recommend reviewing your previous performance on these particular flows, and only turning them on if they have performed well. Below are the numbers you should look for in terms of high engagement and well-performing flows:

• Open rates above 40%

• Click rates above 1%

• Unsubscribe rates below 0.1%

• Complaint rates below 0.1%

What to do if you do not have high performing flows

If your flows have not historically performed well, here are the recommended activation timelines in Uppush:

• Welcome series: activate after about 2 weeks of consistent campaign sending • Abandoned cart: activate after around 30 days of regular campaign sending • Abandoned checkout: activate after around 30 days, once early warm-up engagement is stable • Browse abandonment: activate after 30–60 days, when your domain shows strong and consistent engagement

These timelines help protect your sender reputation while your domain is still warming up.

Monitor your performance

These tools in Uppush will help you track your performance while warming up your sending domain:

• Review flow analytics Regularly check the analytics of your automated flows, including open rates, unsubscribe rates, and spam complaint rates. This helps you understand how subscribers are engaging with your emails during the warm-up phase.

• Monitor campaigns through the trends report Use the trends report to observe changes in key engagement metrics over time. Pay close attention to spikes in “marked as spam” or hard bounce rates, and review any campaigns that may have caused these issues. Consistently monitoring these indicators will help you maintain strong deliverability and protect your sender reputation throughout the warm-up process.