Marketing Cloud milestone update: IP Warming begins July 12

Starting July 12 and spanning over four weeks, UB will send approximately 400,000 emails to internet service providers (ISPs) that host our faculty, staff, student, alumni and donor email addresses to introduce our new email service and elevate deliverability.

IP warming is the practice of slowly scaling up the emails sent to a mailing list in order to build trust with ISPs.

When we send an email, major providers such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL are not required to deliver it to the recipient's inbox. Often, emails can be delivered to spam or junk mail. Emails can also be delivered with a low ranking, causing them to filter into “other” folders with less visibility.

Although our emails will appear the same in recipient inboxes, the university will have a new email domain. Major ISPs are suspicious of mail from a new IP address with no history. If we were to send emails to our entire audience on the first day, it would startle them and hurt our reputation. By taking a slow approach over four weeks, we will build trust with ISPs and show that our audience values our email.

University Communications, University Advancement and UB Information Technology partnered to identify individuals with patterns of high engagement (meaning they’re more likely to click to open emails and engage with the content within an email). These individuals will receive emails with prideful content to encourage high levels of engagement and set the stage for future deliverability.

If you have any questions, please contact Jessica Kane at jmkane@buffalo.edu.