emailrules.today
Stop 5 of 8WorkingThe same second

Warm-up

Building history on a new sending domain or IP by starting small with your most engaged people and rising gradually.

Say it out loud

“A new sending domain has no history at all. We start small with our best people and build up, because there is nothing yet to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

A sender with no record is not a sender with a good record. Providers have nothing to weigh, so they are cautious, and a large first send from an unknown domain looks exactly like the thing they are built to stop. Warming means earning a history: small volumes to the people most likely to react well, increasing only while the complaint rate holds.

The arithmeticA ramp on a new domain, roughlyExample numbersscrolls →
DAY VOLUME SEND TO
1 200 clicked or bought in the last 30 days

Clicks and orders, never opens. Since Apple began prefetching images an open is partly a machine, so a warm-up segment built on opens is partly machines — which is precisely the audience that cannot build you a reputation.

4 1,000 clicked or bought, last 30 days
8 5,000 clicked or bought, last 90 days
14 20,000 clicked or bought, last 180 days
21+ full active list

Only while the complaint rate holds. If it moves, you hold at the current step — you do not push through it.

There is no published ramp. This is the shape, not a standard.

Every provider treats an unknown sender differently, and none of them tell you the thresholds.

Part yours

The platform does part; the rest is genuinely yours.

What goes wrong

Migrating platforms and sending the first campaign to the whole list from a brand-new subdomain on day one. The message is perfectly authenticated, the volume is normal for you, and to the provider it is a domain that did not exist last week sending fifty thousand messages.

What people get told

The claim. “We do not need to warm up, our list is clean and our DNS is perfect.”

Actually. Neither of those is history. Clean data stops you being filtered for the wrong reasons; it does not create the record that makes a provider comfortable. Warm-up is not a hygiene step, it is the only way to acquire the thing being asked for.

See also

Where this sits

Stop 5, reputation decides. Having proved who you are, you find out whether they want you — and that is mostly about your history, not this message.

← BeforeSender reputationNext →Hard bounce

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.