If you’re sending email as part of your brand’s customer messaging strategy, strong deliverability is key—and ensuring your deliverability is where you need it to be depends a great deal on the way you conduct your warm-up process. It’s clear that IP warming makes it possible for marketers to establish a positive reputation with the internet service providers (ISPs) that control access to consumers’ inboxes. But to make the most of this crucial period, it’s important to be thoughtful about the kinds of campaigns you send.

If there’s one key to getting it right, it’s this: Pinpoint what your audience expects from your brand, and deliver that. The goal of IP warming is to demonstrate to ISPs that your email outreach is valued and likely to be engaged with, so sending messages that don’t resonate with recipients is a big no-no.

Take a look at the email campaigns that have worked for you in the past and use those learnings to craft messages designed to get your engagement numbers up. What worked? What didn’t? If your audience tends to respond best to highly visual promotional messages, send that; if they prefer in-depth, newsletter-style emails, on the other hand, adjust your outreach to fit that preference. (However, keep in mind that only email engagement metrics matter when it comes to IP warming—ISPs don’t care what your email campaign revenue, site visits, or other downstream metrics look like.)

You’ll also want to rely on creative that has worked for you in the past. Now is not the time for bold experiments. That said, it’s also important to do what you can to ensure that the emails sent during the warming period are relevant, valuable, and personalized to the people receiving them.

While the stakes are higher, the fundamentals of sending campaigns during the IP warming process aren’t so different than the overall best practices for sending email. Know your audience. Send outreach that’s relevant and wanted. Personalize your outreach to each recipient. And deliver real value with every message.To learn more about how Braze can support smart, relevant email messaging experiences, check out our Email Product Page.