What is an IP Address and Why Should I Care?

In eMail marketing, deployed eMails are coming from a sending IP address in addition to the “from name,” “from eMail address” that you establish. An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (example: Your HighRoad account) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.

Your IP address reputation is like your credit score. If you are sending eMail using best practices, you’re reputation will be good. If you send eMail without proper HTML mark-up and consistently sending to bad addresses, your reputation, as well as your deliverability will need improvement. It’s much easier to maintain a good reputation than to repair a bad one. Even though your HighRoad Solution account has the best of breed ISP/Deliverability management of any solution on the market today, your e-mail strategy, may still help or hurt the IP address your account is set-up on.

Your account may be set-up on a HighRoad Solution shared IP or you may have your own dedicated IP for your organization. A shared IP means that your account as well as other similar organizations, share the same IP address. A dedicated IP address means that your organization is the only one sending e-mail on that IP address.

If your HighRoad Solution account is on a shared IP, you will get the benefit of sending e-mail on an established IP address. This means that ISP’s already know this IP exists and allow e-mail traffic into in-boxes. This also means that what your organization does can affect deliverability for other organizations. If you have any deliverability concerns, you may choose to get a dedicated IP which gives you more control over your IP reputation or “credit score.”

If you choose to get a dedicated IP, you will need to warm the IP and here are a few tips to establish a good IP reputation:

• Start by sending small bursts of traffic consistently. We recommend dividing your current monthly volume by 30 and not exceeding that number on a daily basis.
• If you are currently sending more than 100,000 emails per month with another provider, consider moving your e-mail traffic slowly to your HighRoad Solution account to warm the IP.
• If you are switching from a shared IP to a dedicated IP with your HighRoad Solution account, consult with the support team to plan your IP warming strategy before the dedicated IP address is set-up. You can reach support team at 1-703-297-8886 or send an email. 
• Have your IT department implement both Domain Key and SenderID with your dedicated IP address.
• Manage each e-mail deployments bounce logs (available in statistics) very closely for about a month. This will give you insight into what ISPs may be blocking your IP address.