Your first campaign on a new domain: ramp up

A freshly verified domain has no history. To email providers, an address that has never sent anything and suddenly starts with thousands of messages looks exactly like an address used by a spammer.

So the first campaign does not go to the whole list.

How to climb

The order that worked on a list of nearly a thousand people: 15, then 104, then 488. Between waves you read the bounces and the unsubscribes.

The exact numbers do not matter, the ratio does: each wave is a few times larger than the one before, and none goes out before the previous one has been read.

Who you start with

With the freshest group: people who showed a sign of life in the last year. They are the most likely to open and the least likely to complain, and that builds the reputation the later waves lean on.

The old list, silent for years, goes last. It is also the one producing the most unsubscribes, so the last thing you want is to send to it first, from a domain with no history.

What to read between waves

• Bounces: dead addresses pile up on an old list. Many bounces in a small wave mean the list needs cleaning before you go further
• Unsubscribes: on a win-back after years of silence they are normal, even many of them. People are telling you they are done, and that is fine
• Spam complaints: these are not normal. Above 0.1% means stop, not next wave

Why the patience pays

Reputation is built once and broken once. A burned domain is not repaired by sending less next month, and if you send from a subdomain, at least your ordinary email stays untouched. Two weeks of ramping up cost less than a lost domain.