As a marketer or business owner, your ultimate goal with email marketing is to reach your audience in the most effective way possible. 

What if your carefully crafted cold emails are ending up in spam folders, or worse, not being delivered at all?

This is a common problem for email senders using shared infrastructure, where one person’s bad practices can impact everyone’s reputation. 

But what if there were a way to completely eliminate these risks and take full control over your email-sending infrastructure?

 This is where dedicated email servers, like SmartServers, come into play—the premium feature in Smartlead that provides isolated, high-performance servers tailored to your email campaigns. 

With SmartServers, you get an optimized, secure, and scalable infrastructure, free from the issues caused by shared servers. This can significantly boost your deliverability, reputation, and overall campaign success.

In this blog post, we'll explore why dedicated servers are crucial for email deliverability and share 11 best practices to make sure you're getting the most out of your dedicated server.

Why Dedicated Servers Are Crucial for High-volume campaigns?

When sending emails at scale, one of the most significant challenges you face is maintaining a strong sender reputation. 

Most cold email senders struggle with unpredictable deliverability, which often leads to emails being marked as spam, bounced, or completely blocked by email service providers (ESPs). 

The core reason for this inconsistency is shared infrastructure. On shared servers, you're sharing IP addresses with others—meaning that if someone else on the same server engages in poor practices, like sending spam, it could damage your sender reputation and impact your deliverability.

On the other hand, dedicated servers offer complete control. With SmartServers, you’re given isolated, individual servers that you own and manage. This means you’re no longer sharing IP addresses with other senders, and your email deliverability is no longer dependent on their actions.

What’s the real impact of using SmartServers? The numbers tell an incredible story. Users have experienced massive improvements in their email metrics after switching to SmartServers:

• Matt Lucero reduced his bounce rate from 3.89% to 0.45%—a -88% reduction.
• Marc Heuberger saw a drop from 28.28% to 3.45%—a -88% reduction.
• Noah Snelgrove reduced his bounce rate from 2.28% to 0.72%, a -68% reduction.

These incredible reductions in bounce rates are just the beginning. Users also report up to 259% higher reply rates after making the switch to SmartServers.

9 Best Practices for Using Dedicated Servers like SmartServers

To get the most out of SmartServers, it’s essential to follow a few key practices that will maximize your deliverability and ensure your email reputation stays intact. 

Here’s how you can optimize your high-volume email campaigns with SmartServers.

1. Gradually Warm Up Your IP Address

One of the most common mistakes email marketers make is sending a huge batch of emails immediately after setting up a new dedicated server. Sending emails too quickly can trigger spam filters and damage your reputation right out of the gate.

For example, when you use Smartservers, gradually increase the number of emails you send. Start small—around 5,000 emails per day—and ramp up by 5,000 more emails each day until you hit your desired volume (typically 80,000 to 100,000 emails/month). This helps build your server’s reputation and avoids raising any red flags with ESPs (Email Service Providers).

2. Be Consistent in Your Sending Schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to email marketing. If your email campaigns are inconsistent—either in timing or volume—you might risk harming your sender reputation.

Maintain a predictable sending schedule. Whether you send emails daily, weekly, or biweekly, try to keep it consistent. This steady flow of messages signals to ESPs that you're a legitimate sender, not a spammer.

Plan your email campaigns ahead of time using a content calendar. This helps you stay on track with a regular sending schedule while also avoiding bursts of emails that might appear suspicious.

3. Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Authentication Protocols

Email security is critical. Without proper authentication protocols, your emails are at risk of being blocked or marked as spam. Set up and configure these authentication methods:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Ensures only authorized servers can send emails on behalf of your domain, protecting against spoofing and impersonation.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails to confirm their authenticity, preventing tampering during transit.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Builds on SPF and DKIM by verifying email authenticity, handling delivery failures, and providing detailed reports on email traffic.

By implementing these protocols, you reassure email providers of your email’s legitimacy and reduce the likelihood of your emails landing in spam folders.

Tip: Regularly monitor these protocols to ensure they’re working correctly, as this can help maintain strong deliverability.

4. Avoid Sudden Surges in Email Volume

Say you’re cruising along, sending a consistent 5,000 emails a day, and then suddenly, you decide to blast out 50,000 emails in one go. That’s a huge spike in volume, and it can seriously damage your reputation with ESPs.

Always send emails gradually and avoid sudden volume surges. If you need to ramp up your email send volume, increase it steadily. ESPs are likely to flag any sudden spikes as suspicious, and this could lead to your emails being blocked or sent to spam.

Tip: Stick to a consistent sending volume and, if necessary, plan your larger campaigns gradually. Avoid sending a large batch all at once to maintain a steady, non-suspicious pattern.

5. Monitor Your Reputation Regularly

Your sender reputation is a critical factor in maintaining high email deliverability. Regularly monitor your reputation and track metrics like bounce rates, open rates, and spam complaints. SmartServers provide tools to keep track of these metrics and give you insights into any issues that need to be addressed.

For example, Matt Lucero was able to reduce his bounce rate by -88%, showing just how much of a difference monitoring and optimizing your reputation can make.

6. Load Balancing for High-Volume Campaigns

If you’re sending a lot of emails, it’s essential to balance the load across multiple servers. Overloading a single server can result in slower performance and increase the likelihood of issues with deliverability.

One of the standout features of SmartServers is auto-server rotation. This ensures that email sending volume is evenly distributed across multiple servers, which helps prevent any single server from getting flagged or blacklisted.

By rotating your servers, you spread out the email load, minimizing the chances of your IP addresses being marked as spam or blacklisted by ESPs.

8. Set Bounce Rate Limits and Track Them Closely

Maintaining low bounce rates is one of the most important factors for your server’s reputation. A bounce rate of 1-1.5% per server is ideal. Any higher, and you risk triggering penalties or blacklisting from ESPs.

SmartServers help you monitor bounce rates in real-time, allowing you to quickly identify and fix issues, such as cleaning up your email list or improving email content.

9. Leverage Email Throttling

Email throttling is the practice of limiting the number of emails sent per hour or day to avoid overwhelming email servers and getting flagged by ESPs. It also allows your IP to warm up gradually over time without triggering spam filters.

Most email platforms allow you to throttle your sending speed to ensure a steady and controlled delivery rate. By managing your email output, you can maintain a healthy reputation while scaling your campaigns.

How SmartServers Enhance Your Dedicated Server Experience

While dedicated servers provide incredible control and flexibility, SmartServers take this experience even further by offering a suite of advanced features designed to optimize email deliverability and streamline campaign management.

Key Benefits of Using SmartServers:

1. Auto-Server Rotation: Automatically rotates servers to ensure your sending is spread evenly across multiple IP addresses. This helps prevent blacklisting and optimizes deliverability.
2. Smart Load Balancing: Distributes email traffic across several servers, preventing overload on any single server and ensuring steady performance even during high-volume campaigns.
3. Blacklist Detection: Continuously monitors your IP health and alerts you if an IP is blacklisted. This allows you to rotate or replace IPs to avoid deliverability issues.
4. Granular Control: SmartServers give you the flexibility to allocate servers to specific campaigns or clients, offering you more control over your sending infrastructure.
5. Isolated Dedicated Servers: Each server is dedicated to you and your campaigns, ensuring zero downtime, no interruptions, and complete control over your email-sending process.

By integrating SmartServers with your dedicated server strategy, you can further reduce risks associated with deliverability issues, optimize performance, and ensure your emails are reaching the inbox, not the spam folder.

How to Get Started with SmartServers

If you're ready to take control of your email campaigns, here’s how you can get started with SmartServers:

1. Log in to Smartlead: Access your Smartlead account and go to the SmartServers tab.
2. Purchase Dedicated Servers: Select your region, specify the number of servers, and complete the purchase. You’ll then see your dedicated servers listed along with IP addresses, email statistics, and more.
3. Monitor Server Performance: Track performance metrics like bounce rates, open rates, and more. Optimize your campaigns based on these insights.

Wrapping Up!!

Using dedicated servers for your high-volume email campaigns provides you with the performance and control needed to scale successfully. However, following best practices such as gradually warming up your IP, maintaining consistency, and monitoring reputation is essential for maintaining high deliverability and protecting your sender reputation.

With the added features of SmartServers, you can enhance your dedicated server setup even further by leveraging server rotation, load balancing, and blacklist detection to improve your email campaigns’ performance and ensure long-term success.

Ready to boost your email deliverability and engagement? Get started with SmartServers today!