Overview
A short guide to basic performance knowledge and account warm-up expectations for dealers who have just launched Audience Activation.
Domain Warm-Up
All accounts launch with Graduated Engagement enabled — also known as Domain Warm-Up. Sending starts slowly and ramps up in batches by priority. This is done to:
- Ensure deliverability
- "Warm up" the email domain
- Protect the dealer's reputation
How the warm-up schedule works:
- Day 1 starts at 500 emails; the number doubles each day after that.
- The 500/day figure includes both system and custom campaigns.
- Sends start with the highest priority system campaigns first.
System campaigns get priority because their subject lines, content, and links are already established, formatted, and reputable — which protects the domain while it warms up. Custom Campaigns (Fixed or Dynamic) only become eligible to send after high-priority system campaigns have gone out.
What This Means for Initial Performance
- Expect engagement numbers to start slow and low, then climb as the account matures.
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Almost all dealerships will still have email sent to their entire emailable customer base within the first 2 weeks, depending on contact base size./
Post-Launch Performance Basics
Engagable Contacts
Audience Activation builds Shoppers from your dealership CRM data, then places them into audiences for email and SMS campaigns. Read more about Shoppers here.
A contact is only engagable if it's:
- A complete record (has an email and/or phone number)
- Valid (not a typo, disconnected number, or full inbox)
- Not marked Do Not Contact
Common dealership scenario:
- CRM has 51,000 contacts.
- 39,000 of those have emails.
- Of those 39,000: 13,000 are marked Do Not Contact, and 2,000 have invalid emails.
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Result: only 24,000 emailable/engagable contacts.
Data Lag-Time
There's almost always a delay between:
- A vehicle being sold
- It being declared sold / marked DMS sold
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That status reaching the dealership CRM, then Fullpath pulling it via SFTP or API (every 24 hours)
Because of this lag, looking at only the first 15 days of performance data likely means missing 50% of actual sales (and some lead data too).
Best practice:
- Look back at a full 30 days, not less.
- The most recent 10 days of any range are likely not final yet — the same 30-day range will show more complete numbers if you re-check it 15 days later.
Attribution Window
Within that window, we look for meaningful engagement that preceded a sale, such as:
- Opened or clicked emails
- Site visits that led to conversion
- Test drive requests or other meaningful actions
These become the ROI records shown in reporting. If you only look at the first 30 days after launch, you'll likely miss leads and sales that get attributed later — once the sale is finalized and all actions are recorded. Keep this in mind when communicating initial performance to the customer.
Campaign Warm-Up
Campaigns like VDP Views or Price Drop rely on data collected from the on-site code. In the first 30 days after code goes live, there isn't much historical data yet on who viewed which VDPs or which vehicles had price drops. These audiences build up as the account matures.
Weekend Engagement
- Emails send daily, Monday–Friday, by default. No weekend sends unless the account is specifically configured otherwise in https://dashboard.fullpath.com/settings/nurture/general
- Don't expect weekend engagement, and don't expect Monday-morning engagement for anything launched on a Friday.