Best Practices

Holiday Best Practices

Here are some of the best practices that you can follow for the holiday period:

Inform us of your email campaign schedule and volume plans, especially if they are different from your standard course of sending.
Send off the hour when possible, e.g. 8:20 a.m., and away from traditional “prime time” hours such as 9 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. Use Personalized Send Time for email campaigns that do not contain time-sensitive deals.
Launch new Campaigns or Journey flows by the second week of November to ensure ample QA period and desired outcomes/results.
Run high-volume jobs & imports in advance of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as we advise against running jobs during these peak send times.
Re-educate your teams on Support guidelines and escalation processes.

Here are a few steps to take to ensure your deliverability remains consistent throughout the holiday season.

Do not introduce any new lists that are not currently being mailed to.
Do not reactivate old lists or mail to older lists you have not consistently mailed to.
Do not fully remove suppression lists. If you want to begin sending to less engaged users, slowly begin well before the holiday season starts. That way, issues can be mitigated before Black Friday.
Be cautious of new acquisition sources. Test them prior to the holiday season and ensure they don’t result in hard bounces and complaints.
Be careful changing your sending cadence. ISPs will penalize you for an inconsistent spike in send volume, so increases in cadence should happen slowly. Provide preferences to allow users to opt down from increased marketing.
Do not change your sending domain.