Does batching email sends improve deliverability?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains batching emails if expecting a high flow of customers to your website/call centre to better manage inbound calls.
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that they don't recommend sending large campaigns to your entire list at once. Consider segmenting your list and sending to smaller groups. This helps monitor engagement and address any deliverability issues proactively.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that working with CS to determine batch side is great practice to prevent customer anxiety and department hatred.
Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that it is important to gradually increase sending volume to build a positive sender reputation. Avoid sending large batches of emails all at once, especially when starting with a new IP address or domain.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares batching used to be crucial for shared IPs to not overload the sending queues. Nowadays, with dedicated IPs and good reputation, it's less critical but still beneficial for large lists or new IPs to ramp up sending slowly.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor shares that scheduling your emails is a great way to improve your sending reputation and deliverability. Avoid sending all your emails at once and instead, schedule them to be sent over a period of time. This will help to avoid overwhelming the receiving server and causing your emails to be marked as spam.
Email marketer from Email Geeks recommends batching only if there's a time-sensitive very large send or if someone is struggling to get back into the inbox after cleanup work, using a small batch of engaged subscribers before the rest of the send. This is only temporary after other cleanup is done.
Email marketer from MailerLite shares that the best way to avoid deliverability issues is to segment your email list. Instead of sending a bulk email to everyone, divide your subscribers into smaller groups and send personalized messages to each segment. Also, focus on cleaning your email list to keep your sender reputation high.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that if you suddenly jump to sending large volumes of email without warming up your IP address, mailbox providers will be suspicious and likely route your messages to the spam folder. They explain that establishing trust is vital.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that batching can help manage server load, especially if your system has limitations. But, building a good sender reputation is more critical than batching alone.
Email marketer from HubSpot explains that sending email in batches can negatively impact deliverability, as it can overwhelm recipient servers and trigger spam filters. They recommend gradually increasing sending volume to build a good sender reputation.
Email marketer from GMass responds that Gmail and other email providers will block you if you send too many emails at once. GMass automatically staggers sends (batching) to mimic human sending behavior, which avoids tripping spam filters.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains that batching is not recommended for healthy marketing programs but can be part of a remedy if addressing a specific problem. They also highlight that sending 20M emails a year translates to roughly 42,000 an hour, which is a small amount and doesn't necessitate batching. They confirm that corporate filters are unlikely to be affected by this volume.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains throttling is used to control the number of connections, messages per connection, and recipients per message over a specific time. Proper throttling can help manage your sending reputation and avoid being blocked by ISPs, but too aggressive throttling can waste resources.
Expert from Email Geeks mentions that the success of batching varies and local time zoning can be effective, but agrees that 20k is a small amount that should not need to be batched. He also notes that batching is sometimes used to avoid website traffic spikes.
Expert from Spamresource shares it's essential to understand the acceptable email volume for your specific situation. Gradual ramp-up is more important if you have a new IP address or domain. Sudden spikes in volume can trigger filters, even if you are legitimate.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft explains that sudden spikes in email volume can trigger spam filters. They recommend gradually increasing sending volume and maintaining a consistent sending schedule.
Documentation from RFC states that a message transfer agent (MTA) can implement rate limiting to prevent being overwhelmed by sudden bursts of messages from a single source. This is often a measure to protect against denial-of-service attacks or spam.
Documentation from Google explains that to help Google identify emails you send, it's important to use a consistent sending IP address. They also mention to keep sending rates consistent, and avoid sending email bursts.
Documentation from SparkPost explains IP warming is a process that involves gradually increasing the volume of email sent from a new IP address to establish a positive sender reputation with ISPs and mailbox providers. This prevents being flagged as spam.