Email Volume plays an essential role in Email Reputation. This is due to how ISPs (Internet Service Providers) view a customers reputation. At the core of email, reputation is a breakdown of numbers and percentages based on total inbox volume. That’s important to remember as Inbox Volume, and Sent Volume are two different metrics. We’ll expand more on that topic in a different best practice, but for now, let’s focus on the main driver of success; Volume.
Looking at total volume isn’t looking at a single day sends, but day/day and week/week. That’s because ISPs will look at reputation in a Day/Week/and Month’s performance. Below is a scenario that I think best highlights this point:
| Example Customer | |
| Average Daily Volume | 500 Messages |
| Average Targeted Campaign | 5k Messages |
| Newsletter (All Users who’ve engaged within the last 12 months) | 200k Messages |
In this scenario, the customer has decided to mail to all 200k users in a single day.
What the Customer Sees: They immediately start seeing an increase in deferrals, and low engagement metrics (Low Open Rates and Low Click Through Rates). Following this send, they see that their daily open rates are down and, over time, start to increase back to reasonable rates (It takes them two weeks to get back to average rates).
What the ISP Sees: They see a 400% increase over the previous days send. They then see a spike in complaint percentage (Complaints/Inbox Volume) that day, and the following days after that (There’s no limit to when a user complaint can get generated). Since complaints are looked at in a single day (That Day) over Volume (That Day), percentages can look quite bad following a significant event. Running with this example, the customer received 50 complaints on the day of the large mailing (50/200,000=.025%). Now take that same 50 complaints and apply that to the following days send (50/500=10%). Seeing that recommended complaint rate is .1%, that’s quite a big jump and can likely be the source for this senders deliverability issue.
It’s easy to forget that ISPs have a lot of messages they have to go through in a single day. In a recent study, they estimate that the average total volume of messages sent each day is 269 Billion (http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2017-2021-Executive-Summary.pdf). Of that total volume, 60% was reported as spam (https://www.statista.com/statistics/420391/spam-email-traffic-share/). That’s a lot of mail for the providers to sift through to protect their users from malicious messages.
Here are some recommendations that Revinate suggests our hoteliers follow:
-
Keep Volume Consistent: Avoiding significant spikes is critical for success, that’s clear. What isn’t clear is that no volume also runs possible performance risks. Creating triggered campaigns, notifications, or other types of messages from your Marketing Account ensures your program maintains some level of volume through the days you’re not sending massive email campaigns.
-
When sending a large campaign, split it out over a few days: For newsletters, or promotional offers that don’t have an expiration, there’s no need to send out the campaign in one large blast. We recommend that splitting your campaign across multiple days gives your email program the best chance for success.
-
Remember to keep it all Relative: Percentages play a significant role in on a program’s deliverability rate. Increases are okay, but they need to be in moderation. Keeping you Day/Day performance down to a manageable about (100%) is reasonable. It’s when volume increases by 1000% when a program can expect to see serious issues.
Following these suggestions will help your team be successful. Of course, if you do have questions regarding our recommendation, please feel free to open a ticket with support. Our team is always happy and able to any performance related concern you have with your Revinate Marketing account.