Of all the tactics at a marketer’s fingertips, none surpasses email marketing in terms of successful audience engagement and conversions. Yet, when bulk emailing, certain issues come into play most notably, email throttling. Email throttling is the deliberate restriction of the number of emails sent and at what time, utilized to sustain a positive sender reputation and reach the best in deliverability. In this article, we explore what email throttling is, how it affects bulk emailing, and how marketers can reduce the effects of this phenomenon to achieve better email delivery success.
What is Email Throttling and Why Does it Happen?
Email throttling is a process through which Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email servers intentionally delay or limit the number of emails they are willing to receive from specific senders. Generally, email throttling happens because of spam-like sending patterns or sending too many emails in too brief a time. ISPs aim to protect their servers or safeguard their users from unsolicited amounts of spam. Using an email deliverability tool can help identify throttling triggers and optimize sending patterns to maintain inbox placement. Unfortunately, however, this makes an incredible difference in the speed and success of large-scale email campaigns reaching their intended subscribers.
How Throttling Impacts Your Ability to Successfully Get Emails Delivered.
Throttling doesn’t just mean that emails get sent to subscribers’ inboxes and are delayed; delayed emails can generate time-sensitive offers or messages not sent when recipients would like them to be. The more severe the throttling, the longer it takes, which could mean days to actually get an email to a subscriber, impacting those who need to rely on returns and subscriber engagement. Low engagement rates impact not only the singular email campaign but also impact quarterly and annual campaign efforts on a broader scale. In addition, consistent throttling impacts sender reputation, which can complicate future delivery attempts for time-sensitive materials that hopefully shouldn’t need to be delayed in the future.
What Causes Throttling?
There are many reasons behind email throttling. The easiest way to get caught in a rapid email throttling situation is to have sudden spikes in volume sent over short periods; ISPs get suspicious about instantly growing volumes of disingenuous material. Other triggers for constant email throttling include sporadic sending history over time, inconsistent bounce rates and spam complaints from recipients, poor authentication, and sender IP address issues. The more marketers understand what can cause email throttling, the less likely they will make mistakes that jeopardize future large deliverability.
Email Throttling Reduces Subscriber Experience
Email throttling reduces subscriber experience as nothing is worse when people are expecting an email and it doesn’t come through as scheduled. People are awaiting their email and when it goes missing or comes tardy due to email throttling, the results could be confusion at best and unsubscribing at worst. If an email from a brand is throttled consistently, it will impact subscriber engagement through low open rates and lack of click success, resulting in more people opting to unsubscribe. Therefore, if brands can avoid email throttling, they can improve subscriber experience by ensuring accessibility.
Email Throttling Improves Results
Email throttling improves results when brands can use the phenomenon to their benefit. When brands understand that email throttling exists, they can use it to their advantage to control send rates and avoid detection by ISPs. When brands throttle sends, it sends them over an extended period which avoids any spikes in activity, making it look like less of a spammy endeavor. Thus, it’s easy to maintain sender reputation this way, and email throttling allows a larger campaign to get to inboxes faster, which can lead to better engagement since it was received within an appropriate time frame.
Ways to Avoid Email Throttling
There are many ways that email marketers can avoid email throttling to ensure successful sending of their messages. First, they can avoid sending to their entire list at once but instead segment and offer times to various people. Next, brands should authenticate their emails where possible with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC as well as keeping clean lists of subscribers in order to avoid bounces. Following recommended bounce rates and addressing spam complaints right away are other ways to avoid any allegations that lead to email throttling.
Avoiding Throttling with Longterm Send Rate Awareness
By monitoring send rates and avoiding excess over time, one can prevent the possibilities of throttling. Deliverability statistics are available to marketers acceptance rates, bounce rates, and inbox placements. If one group of consumers continually shows that they have a low open rate, it can be sent to them less frequently to avoid complications and acknowledge what sending sources are stating. Instead of keeping quiet or ignoring excessive sending opportunities, providing feedback about send rates makes it easier for everyone to make constant and consistent delivery. Therefore, the potential for throttling to happen decreases as long as scheduled professional efforts are made on time.
Throttling and Its Relationship to Sender Reputation
Every time an email goes out, a campaign leader also has to consider the sender reputation for ongoing deliverability. Throttling occurs often and when it does, it shows the ISP that you should not be entitled to deliverability for your future emails. Therefore, consistently avoiding throttling in honor of sender reputation is worthwhile for deliverability elsewhere. As long as you can protect your reputation based upon being careful with send frequency (and subsequent throttling), you can enjoy deliverability in the future based upon encouraged engagement standards. Thus, avoiding potential difficulties makes subsequent marketing much easier in the future with those who’ve engaged successfully in the past.
Email Marketers Less Likely to Throttle with Recommended ESPs
While email marketers can attempt to avoid getting throttled without any outside assistance, it’s better to work with the crème de la crème of Email Service Providers. Quality ESPs will have working relationships with all potential ISPs and thus, avoid having emails throttled more so than someone who has no established history with previously sent emails on behalf of other clients serving as padding for your current efforts. They also have automation features set up to recognize when throttling will occur, what thresholds need to be monitored and when sends need to be staggered; thus, relying upon their insight, knowledge, and technological features, they will advocate on your behalf to manage engagement for you and allow deliverability optimization while ensuring consistent subscriber experience even on larger scales.
Avoiding Negative Subscriber Response with Throttling Delay Communication
Negative subscriber responses to throttling delays are less likely as long as the brand is honest and communication efforts are made to avoid frustrating situations. If you think something will be delayed in delivery, inform subscribers sooner rather than later so they know what’s going on and what to expect. When information is communicated sooner rather than later and a brand isn’t playing a hidden agenda, it keeps the trust factor intact and decreases frustration and destruction of brand integrity. While throttling can be frustrating for campaigns and the subscriber-brand relationship, clear communication fosters the opposite.
Educating Marketing Teams about Throttling
Educating the marketing team will keep them aware of throttling, whether or not it occurs. For example, there may be a reason your items throttle (too many bounces, sending too much too quickly, sender reputation); educating teams about these factors will allow them to maintain compliance and avoid issues. Educating them on potential throttling prevention (confirmation of interest upon sign up, limited volume sends, proper sender reputation maintenance) gives educated team members the power they need to get large-scale campaigns out on time. The more educated a team is about email throttling, the more likely they’ll avoid prevalent pitfalls to solve the problem before it happens.
Understanding Email Throttling Impacts Over Time
Understanding how throttling impacts campaigns over time helps give assessed value beyond the immediate engagement factor. For example, assessing subscriber retention, engagement rates, and ROI over each campaign can give email marketers an idea if or how email throttling negatively impacted results afterward. If brands see a downtick in retention or engagement over time, they must assess their sender reputation through feedback loops; this ensures they don’t continue damaging what they’ve worked hard to establish with quality subscriber interactions.
Using ISP Recommendations to Reduce Throttling
One of the simplest methods for reducing email throttling is to follow ISP recommendations. ISPs publish sending standards and delivery recommendations so marketers know what to avoid to not have their emails throttled or otherwise fail to deliver. Thus, requirements for daily operations based on these recommendations mean marketers will have a better sender reputation if they follow these rules and take the proactive opportunity to use best practices for successful alignment with ISP recommendations. This helps avoid throttling by ensuring successful delivery for better campaign operations.
Throttle Avoidance Through Audience Segmentation
Audience segmentation helps avoid email throttling. Instead of sending a massive campaign all at once from a specific sender to a thousand recipients, the marketer can segment the audience into smaller groups and schedule a segmented send in smaller increments. This way, too much isn’t sent at one time and it has a better chance that a large percentage sent at once won’t trigger an ISP to throttle the email because it won’t register as a sudden influx of traffic. This allows for better natural flow to email sending and encourages deliverability while ensuring subscribers get timely, relevant messaging as per their newly segmented status.
Clean Email Lists to Avoid Throttling
Knowing who is on an email list and cleaning them regularly reduces opportunities for throttling. When ISPs see websites having excessively high bounce rates or unsubscribe/SPAM report complaints, they more often make it likely that sender emails will be throttled. Therefore, cleaning subscriber databases through things like eliminating dead accounts, correcting typos, and removing people as soon as they request unsubscribing keeps lists clean. Clean lists keep sender reputations high and don’t make it more likely for senders to get throttled, helping deliverability on that email as well as future like-minded emails with good engagement metrics.
Utilizing IP Warming to Minimize Initial Throttling
One key element to remember about new IP addresses when engaging in large-scale email sends is something called IP warming. IP warming essentially means that a sender slowly increases sending volume over time from an IP address that is new or hasn’t been used in the past. This is important because it allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to build a modest level of awareness of a sender’s reputation. If, however, volume spikes overnight, this can lead to throttling or other deliverability issues as ISPs do not recognize who the sender is. Therefore, easing the process through strategic IP warming helps avoid early complications of throttling and increases the chances of deliverability to the inbox and success of large-scale email sends.
Conclusion
Email throttling affects large campaign sends by compromising deliverability, subscriber experience, and overall email marketing success. Email throttling occurs when an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or email server regulates an incoming message and does so, in part, by not sending it as quickly or effectively as it could be. For example, if an email is sent out on a massive scale, an ISP might perceive this as overwhelming and throttle it, meaning it’ll be delivered much more slowly than intended. This can wreak havoc on promotional opportunities or crucial notifications. If emails are sent, and they arrive too late because they’ve been throttled, they’re not useful. Thus, such occurrences impact the success of a campaign. In addition, subscribers will be frustrated with their user experience if they receive emails at strange hours or find massive gaps between expected delivery and received time. This leads to decreased engagement, less trust, and increased unconditional tendencies.
Thus, managing email throttling helps to ensure ever-present delivery and improved subscriber experience to maintain long-term email success. Subscribers want to learn from brands; when they are continually sent appropriate content in a timely manner and not lost in cyberspace they feel as if the brand has their best interest at heart. The more trust people have in subscription services, the more they’ll remain onboard and have idealistic relationships with audiences that ultimately allow better chances for business success down the line emphasizing the need for effective email throttling management for large-scale campaigns.
