Let's discuss volume sends during the holiday season

Great question! As a bit of background, any time you plan on increasing the amount of mail you send, it’s critical to keep the subscriber experience in mind. I’m glad that you’re already thinking about the big picture! During Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond, more email is being sent and filtered by mailbox providers, and everybody’s inboxes are stuffed to the brim. Some brands begin to send multiple emails a day, hoping to catch recipients at the exact right time and snag a conversion. On the one hand, more mail means more opportunities to make sales. But on the other hand, it also means that there are more messages that may linger in the inbox unread, which is both bad for sender reputation, and decreases the ROI of your marketing efforts. 

If you’ll be sending more often to folks who are already actively engaging with your email content, remember that engagement doesn’t last forever. If folks feel overwhelmed by the additional outreach efforts, they could unsubscribe or report you as spam, which means they’ll be lost forever (or until they sign up again). Rather than risk damaging your reputation with subscribers or their mailbox providers, consider leveraging a preference center that allows subscribers to pause or reduce the emails they receive from you. You can send an email that proactively notifies users that your holiday sending will be more frequent, and ask if they want to update their preferences to either stop mail for a specified period of time, or give the option of downgrading to weekly or monthly messages. If you’d rather not be quite so transparent, you can merely highlight the preference center in the body or footer of your campaign, with a call-to-action that says something like, “too much holiday mail? We get it! Click here to manage your subscription” which directs users to the preference center without explicitly calling out that you’ll be ramping up sends.

If you’ll be including lapsed or less-engaged audience members in your holiday sends, do so gradually and assess how they impact your overall results. Users with no history, or engagement older than 12 months, could be spam traps or otherwise dangerous data, so pay close attention to bounces, complaints, and open rates. Sender reputation can rapidly decline if recipients don’t respond positively to your overtures, and you don’t want to lose the inbox placement you worked hard all year to earn!  

As a note, if you’re tempted to make it more difficult to unsubscribe–don’t! Unsubscribes are reputationally neutral but spam complaints are extremely damaging, and the “spam” button is in the same place for every message. Frustrated users will absolutely report mail as spam if that’s the easiest option, so highlight the ways that recipients can reduce mail safely. 

Finally, consider leveraging alternate channels. Email is powerful, but it has some drawbacks, too. Email is not an instant messaging medium and has a reputation component, so deliveries can be delayed, blocked, or delivered to the spam folder. Alternate channels like push and in-app can help you minimize risk before including lapsed users in your email audience. You can ask people to confirm their email address, update their subscription, or confirm their messaging preferences, ensuring that your email reputation remains untarnished.