Email "warmup" when transitioning to OLX

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Hi, fellow community members.

We're currently working on onboarding our direct marketing firm to manage our email campaigns via Online Express, and they have requested that we look into whether or not Blackbaud has any recommendations around an "IP warmup" process. They essentially want to send some introductory emails to constituents who use one of the major email providers like Gmail, MSN, Comcast, etc. to minimize the likelihood of our future email solicitations being flagged as spam or being put into a "promo" category.


I've been looking through BB Community and Knowledgebase, but am not really finding anything about this. I've seen a couple of articles on how to whitelist incoming emails from OLX, but not much else of use. Has anyone else tried something like this, or have any experiences to relate that might be useful? I'm hesitant to immediately reach out to our Blackbaud rep as I assume something like this would fall outside our standard support coverage and into the "we'll need to charge you $200/hour" territory. Any help is appreciated!
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  • So I don't have a direct answer for you, however I will say I just had a lengthy conversation with our rep about OLX because a vendor had questions about analytic capabilities. My instinct says the answer is probably no, because OLX is designed as their free add on. They have Luminate which is their much more sophisticated email tool which I imagine addresses what you are looking for. However I reached out to our main rep (with the whole new restructuring of their teams, we were told this is our "go-to" person for everything and she was able to answer a lot of my questions.
  • Hi Rob. We actually maintain "perpetually warm" shared IP addresses. We do work to make sure enough email volume flows across all of the ranges of sending IPs that we use that none of our customers are sending through "cold" IPs. This in combination with properly configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC (which our Support team can help with) and normal list hygiene management should be all you need to ensure no issues in transitioning to Online Express for sending email.


    I'll just add that if by chance your organization has RE NXT, you might consider using the new email marketing tool available there. Its drag and drop design experience is superior, it's accessible natively via browser, has a few dozen very nice email templates to choose from out-of-the-box, and is where our future enhancements will all be landing (granular communication preferences, marketing automation, etc.)
  • Thanks, Chris. That's really helpful and good to hear. I suspected as much, based on the OLX best practices info I found, but this will go a long way towards calming any anxiety our marketing partners have.

     

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