Lately, we've had questions about IPs and volume and when to increase the number of IPs.

When we work with folks on the setup, we design the plan based on discussed volume, warm up requirements and long term growth expectations. In general, we recommend 1 IP for every 75K - 100K messages per day for optimal warm up speeds. (NOTE: Following the warm up recommendations are critical to long term success).

This number can be stretched a bit if the warm up period has some flexibility as the goal is to increase incrementally over time.

However, for the long term, it is still important to consider the number of IPs based on the overall volume you'll be sending (this is assuming a good reputation, high engagement, low complaints, etc.). You should generally assume that you'll need 1 IP for every 150,000 - 200,000 messages per day, especially if your messages are time sensitive or going out regularly.

This again, assumes decent reputation factors.

If you have excellent engagement rates, keep a clean list (purging old data regularly), keep complaint rates down to just a handful per campaign, etc. it is certainly possible to send more, especially if the messages are not time sensitive. We have clients that send to 600K on one IP, but throttle those messages out over a period of time and have virtually no complaints and high open rates.

Conversely, if you have a less than squeaky clean list, you may need additional IPs, especially as you scale up.

Remember, we can't force the ISPs to accept your mail faster (aka they have limits per hour based on a number of factors) and we can't control complaint rates (one of the biggest factors for ISP throttling and blocks).

If you are planning on adding significant volume, or have done so and are having some challenges, then it may be a case of too much volume for number of IPs.

For over a decade Heather Seitz used email marketing to build successful companies and had to solve the biggest barrier to consistent profitability: deliverability. Today she is the Co-Founder and CEO of Email Delivered.

If you have questions about volume of mail vs IPs, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/volume-of-mail-vs-ips/. Remember to sign up for the FREE Email Delivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources for email marketers.

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