Email deliverability do's & don'ts during the holidays

Author
Will Boyd
Director, Deliverability Services

Table of contents

1. The challenges of email deliverability during peak season
2. The three levers for email deliverability control
   • Lever 1: Who you send to
   • Lever 2: What you send
   • Lever 3: How often and for how long you send to recipients
3. What to do before the holidays
4. What to do during the sending frenzy
5. Gather insights
6. What to do after the holiday season

The challenges of email deliverability during peak season

The massive increase in global email volumes during the holiday season puts stress on both mailbox providers and recipients. Mailbox providers become less trusting of messages in general and more reactive to signals of spam such as spam complaints and delivery attempts to bad addresses. The outcomes are either

• Suspicious mail is refused for delivery and is blocked
• Suspicious mail is quarantined to the spam folder.

The three levers for email deliverability control

Lever 1: Who you send to

It’s crucial to send messages to recipients who have opted in to limit spam complaints and ensure engagement.

Lever 2: What you send

Ensure your messages are relevant and have clear calls to action to encourage engagement.

Lever 3: How often and for how long you send to recipients

Avoid over-sending to recipients and limit messages to those not engaging positively with your emails.

What to do before the holidays

1. Take inventory of your current email program and evaluate deliverability health.
2. Evaluate your email templates to ensure they are clean, accessible, and secure.
3. Create a sending calendar with goals for your campaigns and build breaks into your schedule.
4. Warm up your audience by teasing what to expect during the holiday season.
5. Define what success looks like with conversions as a metric beyond just open and click rates.

What to do during the sending frenzy

Continually optimize the things you can control

• Ensure you are sending to engaged recipients and limit messages to those who have not interacted.
• Tailor content to recipients’ interests and schedule sends at staggered times to avoid traffic congestion.

Monitor Vital Signs

• Address hard bounces to maintain list hygiene and analyze reasons for soft bounces.
• Track open rates and analyze complaints to adjust your targeting strategy.

Gather insights

• Understand subscriber intent and adapt messaging for new subscribers post-holidays.
• Keep records of deliverability stats to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement.

What to do after the holiday season

1. Allow time for recovery of your sending reputation with conservative targeting strategies.
2. Consider re-permissioning new addresses and collecting interest information.
3. Document your learnings from the season to prepare for next year.