Are there benefits to sending email from regional IPs?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that regional IPs can improve deliverability by aligning with the recipient's location, building trust, and potentially improving engagement rates.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that there are US ISPs tolerating less connections or volumes or speed from non-US IPs, and that maybe tomorrow they'll change that, without telling anyone.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that using regional IPs can sometimes help bypass specific regional blocks or filters, especially in countries with strict internet censorship.
Email marketer from SendGrid shares that dedicated IP addresses allow you to build a sending reputation based on your email practices, potentially beneficial for deliverability in specific regions.
Email marketer from Quora shares that there *can* be a slight advantage with regional IPs due to perceived relevance by some ISPs, particularly in certain geographic regions like Asia, but consistent sending practices are key.
Email marketer from StackOverflow shares that some regional ISPs may have different filtering rules, and using an IP from the same region as your recipients *might* provide a slight edge, but it's not a guarantee.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that sender reputation is the most important factor for deliverability, and it's influenced by engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and complaint rates, more than IP region.
Email marketer from SparkPost shares that IP warmup is important when starting to use a new IP address to send emails, and the region of the IP isn't as relevant as the gradual increase in volume and engagement metrics.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares that he thinks regional IPs might help with deliverability in specific countries where there are strict regulations or firewalls, but it depends on the specific situation and it's not a universal solution.
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that IP location is one factor considered by ISPs, although it is not the primary driver of email placement. Domain authentication and sender reputation carry more weight.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Spam Resource shares that while geo-located IPs were once thought to provide a deliverability advantage, especially in specific regions, most major mailbox providers now prioritize sender reputation and authentication over IP location.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that in some cases, you’ll get better response from local IPs, however EU <-> US isn’t the situation where he would expect it to be much of an issue.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that APAC might see a bigger improvement from sending on local IPs than in the EU and that the EU <> US send is not really an issue for most businesses or mailbox providers
Expert from Word to the Wise responds that IP address location is a small component of deliverability, but not a huge factor. Having good email marketing practice will provide a better return
Expert from Email Geeks shares that there’s never any guarantee in email delivery, and you’ll just need to set client expectations. Also, what region your sending IP is allocated from is list in the noise compared to most everything else, so it might be a good point to suggest they look at all the other things that’ll dominate performance.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from AWS explains that you can send emails from different AWS regions, which might be beneficial for latency or compliance reasons, implicitly leveraging regional infrastructure.
Documentation from RFC explains the importance of Reverse DNS (rDNS) which maps IP addresses back to domain names and how maintaining correct rDNS records for regional IPs can help with deliverability.
Documentation from Microsoft shares that configuring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records correctly for your sending domain, regardless of IP region, is critical for establishing trust with recipient servers.