Case: A domain warm-up runbook that lifted inbox placement from 64% to 92%

Case: A domain warm-up runbook that lifted inbox placement from 64% to 92%

An email team blasted new domains at full volume and landed in spam. A staged warm-up runbook fixed deliverability before scaling.

Run this whenever a new sending domain goes live.

Stage 1 — Setup (Owner: deliverability)
☐ SPF, DKIM, DMARC verified passing
☐ Dedicated IP, no shared reputation

Stage 2 — Ramp (Owner: deliverability)
☐ Day 1-3: 50/day to engaged users only
☐ Double daily volume only if open rate over 20%

Stage 3 — Monitor (Owner: deliverability)
☐ Check spam-rate dashboard daily, hold if over 0.1%
☐ Seed-test inbox placement every 3 days

Trigger: new domain activation.
Done-when: domain reaches target volume with placement over 90%.

Result: inbox placement rose from 64% to 92% over a 21-day ramp; zero blacklistings.

Save this. Run it every time.