IP warming for low send volume and inconsistent cadence

Question

We've just migrated over to SFMC, and I'm planning for a campaign that targets around 25k of my customers for this year. However, it's a one-off campaign and I'm not planning to send anything out until 2020, where my send volume might go up to 100k.

Was advised that I should warm up my IP so I can deliver to the 25k audience, but I don't have any plans to send out any other comms until 2020 to keep my IP warm.

I was given 2 options:

1. Switch over to shared IP for now and switch back to my dedicated IP in 2020 and ramp up to 100k when I have some kind of consistent comms going out each month to 100k to keep my IP warm.

2. Stick to my dedicated IP and ramp up to 25k for now. Come 2020, ramp up to 100k and fingers crossed I have some kind of consistent comms ready by then to keep it warm.

Are these the only options available to me and which option works better in terms of the amount of effort and for continuity?

Answer 1

I would go with the shared IP as far as there is no big cost associated with that. I am suggesting this option because of two reason

1) You never know when you are going to start sensing campaigns consistently.

2) If your current campaign is of high priority, then choosing the 1st option enables you to send this campaign to your whole list(25K) in one shot rather than waiting to warm up your IP to reach that 25K limit, sometimes even 25K limit is a big number for a cold IP. This not only helps your current campaign but if you ever wanted to do 2 or 3 unplanned campaigns, you can still manage easily with the shared IP, until you are in a position to send campaigns regularly and then switch to your dedicated IP & do the warm-up & ramp-up.

If there is a big cost associated with this temporary shared IP concept, then the only other option is to warm up your IP (Will take a bit of time & procedure to send your first campaign) and send your current campaign and start again from scratch in 2020 when you have more subscribers and more campaigns to distribute.

There are 2 downsides with this approach,

1) You have to do the warm up now as well when you start again in 2020.

2) Leaving your IP idle for a long time is going to affect your IP reputation & deliverability.

Overall going with a shared IP seems like a swift option for you. Hope the information helps, Good Luck!

Regards, Siva