Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are coming! And believe it or not, the time to begin preparation for deliverability success is NOW! BFCM is the big game, the big leagues for email marketers. That last six weeks of the year can result in an exceptionally bombastic amount of revenue made from email marketing.
When it comes to deliverability, it's a challenging time. Mailbox providers are seeing higher than average volumes of mail. And you know this, right? Because you're sending more mail, more often, compared to other times of the year. And many other email marketers are doing the same. That means spam filters are processing more mail and the postmaster teams (the people managing spam filters and reviewing remediation requests) are processing more requests for assistance compared to the rest of the year.
Here you'll find my top five tips on how to make sure you maximize your chances of deliverability success (and getting delivered to the inbox) during the holiday season of 2024:
NUMBER ONE: Lock in that infrastructure. Now! If you're a dedicated IP sender, that means having enough IPs in place to deliver email in a timely manner. The specifics will depend on your platform, but I've alays aimed for sending no more than two million messages per IP address per day. More is doable, but keep in mind that you're not usually looking for "successful delivery over 24 hours" – you're looking for a quick and speedy delivery much faster than that.
Keep in mind that now is really not a great time to warm a new IP address, too, because of the increased email volume and potential for increased scrutiny. If you've got new IPs to warm up, hurry up and get it started now so that you can be 8+ weeks into warming by the time Thanksgiving weekend comes around.
This also applies to domain and domain settings. Everything you send needs to be authenticated with SPF and DKIM. One or both of those needs to "align" so as to pass DMARC. You need to implement DMARC (at least "p=none" but c'mon, at this point, do better and actually protect that domain with a DMARC policy of "p=quarantine" or "p=reject."
NUMBER TWO: Master domain reputation. Domain authentication begets domain reputation. Authenticated mail that you send is easily and reliably ranked by multiple mailbox providers, most importantly Gmail, but others, as well. This means signing up for Google Postmaster Tools, if you're not already using it, so you can monitor their view of your domain (and IP) reputation.
This means also, don't share your domains with people doing things that you can't control. Nothing damages a domain reputation faster than unchecked affiliate spam. Every time I run into a non-obvious "Gmail hates my domain" issue, it is invariably due to some affiliate relationship (and their use/mis-use of the domain) that a client didn't tell me about.
NUMBER THREE: Don't dig deep into dumpy data. Permission rules, for starters. Your goal is to send compelling email content to those who have signed up to receive that mail, that are expecting to receive that mail. That's what people who work for Yahoo, Google and other mailbox providers are going to say. Digging out old (or bad) data is risky. Bad data could be third party lists, or it really could just be old lists. It's risky, either way.
A time-honored tradition around the holiday season is to dig out and send email to every subscriber you can, even if you've had to previously suppress them to help boost engagement and address deliverability issues. Bring them back into the fold, and engagement will dip. Mail way more often, and engagement will dip. Heck, engagement is going to dip no matter what (it's a bit lower this quarter as inboxes are more full of email marketing and it's a fight for attention) – but you don't want to make it worse by adding to the influx in a way that adds little value, gets you ignored, or even worse, gets you delivered to the spam folder.
NUMBER FOUR: Don't rely on favors to succeed. More marketing mail sent means more spam filtering issues, means more remediation tickets, means slower response to those tickets. Or perhaps even no response. Or just not the desired one. If you stay away from doing things that will cause complaints to spike (or engagement to drop like a rock), you're better off. If you have to rely on somebody on the other side pushing a lever to restore your deliverability, you don't know how quickly (or if) they'll respond.
Google has made it clear that they're only considering assisting people who are following their requirements – if your complaint rates are too high or you haven't properly implemented DKIM and DMARC, the threat there is that they will not do you any favors, if you submit a request for help.
NUMBER FIVE: Be aware of What Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are doing. In years past, I'd point out in closing that Microsoft can be a bit of a sticky wicket. Quick to block, slow to unblock, days to respond to requests for remediation assistance. That's still generally true, but to add to it, we've now got Yahoo and Google's updated sender requirements looming over us as well.
Don't be surprised! Make sure you are in full compliance with their new requirements around email authentication, list-unsubscribe, and everything else. Some of these are platform requirements, and some of them are on the platform's customers to configure and implement. Any modern email platform should be able to support everything Google and Yahoo are requiring.
These requirements might be new to you, especially if you're new to email marketing. But savvy platform managers and deliverability consultants shouldn't find them surprising at all – these requirements are basically just taking commonly-known best practices and converting them into written requirements.
BONUS: Be extra aware of Google and Gmail's one key difference this year.
You're really going to have a tough time succeeding with email marketing if you're blocked from sending to Gmail mailboxes. And Google has woken up, in that it is treating more mail vastly differently than in years past. I've blogged before about how Gmail blocking was exceedingly rare in years gone by. It is no longer rare.
If you send low quality, low value email, driving high complaints or low engagement, you WILL end up blocked at Gmail. If your sending domain, or even one or more of your URL domains, is seen as spammy, blocking will happen. And it takes longer to repair than in years past. Pulling back your sending so that you're only focusing on engaged subscribers might still fix things, but it is likely to take longer than the 3-5 weeks it took in the past.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are coming! And believe it or not, the time to begin preparation for deliverability success is NOW! BFCM is the big game, the big leagues for email marketers. That last six weeks of the year can result in an exceptionally bombastic amount of revenue made from email marketing.
When it comes to deliverability, it's a challenging time. Mailbox providers are seeing higher than average volumes of mail. And you know this, right? Because you're sending more mail, more often, compared to other times of the year. And many other email marketers are doing the same. That means spam filters are processing more mail and the postmaster teams (the people managing spam filters and reviewing remediation requests) are processing more requests for assistance compared to the rest of the year.
Here you'll find my top five tips on how to make sure you maximize your chances of deliverability success (and getting delivered to the inbox) during the holiday season of 2024:
NUMBER ONE: Lock in that infrastructure. Now! If you're a dedicated IP sender, that means having enough IPs in place to deliver email in a timely manner. The specifics will depend on your platform, but I've alays aimed for sending no more than two million messages per IP address per day. More is doable, but keep in mind that you're not usually looking for "successful delivery over 24 hours" – you're looking for a quick and speedy delivery much faster than that.
Keep in mind that now is really not a great time to warm a new IP address, too, because of the increased email volume and potential for increased scrutiny. If you've got new IPs to warm up, hurry up and get it started now so that you can be 8+ weeks into warming by the time Thanksgiving weekend comes around.
This also applies to domain and domain settings. Everything you send needs to be authenticated with SPF and DKIM. One or both of those needs to "align" so as to pass DMARC. You need to implement DMARC (at least "p=none" but c'mon, at this point, do better and actually protect that domain with a DMARC policy of "p=quarantine" or "p=reject."
NUMBER TWO: Master domain reputation. Domain authentication begets domain reputation. Authenticated mail that you send is easily and reliably ranked by multiple mailbox providers, most importantly Gmail, but others, as well. This means signing up for Google Postmaster Tools, if you're not already using it, so you can monitor their view of your domain (and IP) reputation.
This means also, don't share your domains with people doing things that you can't control. Nothing damages a domain reputation faster than unchecked affiliate spam. Every time I run into a non-obvious "Gmail hates my domain" issue, it is invariably due to some affiliate relationship (and their use/mis-use of the domain) that a client didn't tell me about.
NUMBER THREE: Don't dig deep into dumpy data. Permission rules, for starters. Your goal is to send compelling email content to those who have signed up to receive that mail, that are expecting to receive that mail. That's what people who work for Yahoo, Google and other mailbox providers are going to say. Digging out old (or bad) data is risky. Bad data could be third party lists, or it really could just be old lists. It's risky, either way.
A time-honored tradition around the holiday season is to dig out and send email to every subscriber you can, even if you've had to previously suppress them to help boost engagement and address deliverability issues. Bring them back into the fold, and engagement will dip. Mail way more often, and engagement will dip. Heck, engagement is going to dip no matter what (it's a bit lower this quarter as inboxes are more full of email marketing and it's a fight for attention) – but you don't want to make it worse by adding to the influx in a way that adds little value, gets you ignored, or even worse, gets you delivered to the spam folder.
NUMBER FOUR: Don't rely on favors to succeed. More marketing mail sent means more spam filtering issues, means more remediation tickets, means slower response to those tickets. Or perhaps even no response. Or just not the desired one. If you stay away from doing things that will cause complaints to spike (or engagement to drop like a rock), you're better off. If you have to rely on somebody on the other side pushing a lever to restore your deliverability, you don't know how quickly (or if) they'll respond.
Google has made it clear that they're only considering assisting people who are following their requirements – if your complaint rates are too high or you haven't properly implemented DKIM and DMARC, the threat there is that they will not do you any favors, if you submit a request for help.
NUMBER FIVE: Be aware of What Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are doing. In years past, I'd point out in closing that Microsoft can be a bit of a sticky wicket. Quick to block, slow to unblock, days to respond to requests for remediation assistance. That's still generally true, but to add to it, we've now got Yahoo and Google's updated sender requirements looming over us as well.
Don't be surprised! Make sure you are in full compliance with their new requirements around email authentication, list-unsubscribe, and everything else. Some of these are platform requirements, and some of them are on the platform's customers to configure and implement. Any modern email platform should be able to support everything Google and Yahoo are requiring.
These requirements might be new to you, especially if you're new to email marketing. But savvy platform managers and deliverability consultants shouldn't find them surprising at all – these requirements are basically just taking commonly-known best practices and converting them into written requirements.
BONUS: Be extra aware of Google and Gmail's one key difference this year.
You're really going to have a tough time succeeding with email marketing if you're blocked from sending to Gmail mailboxes. And Google has woken up, in that it is treating more mail vastly differently than in years past. I've blogged before about how Gmail blocking was exceedingly rare in years gone by. It is no longer rare.
If you send low quality, low value email, driving high complaints or low engagement, you WILL end up blocked at Gmail. If your sending domain, or even one or more of your URL domains, is seen as spammy, blocking will happen. And it takes longer to repair than in years past. Pulling back your sending so that you're only focusing on engaged subscribers might still fix things, but it is likely to take longer than the 3-5 weeks it took in the past.
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