Summary
Staggering email sends is a crucial strategy for enhancing sender reputation and avoiding throttling. This involves gradually increasing sending volume, especially when warming up new IPs or after periods of inactivity, and maintaining consistent engagement. Staggering prevents overwhelming ISPs and triggering spam filters, helping to build a positive sending reputation. Engagement is directly linked to reputation, and strategic ramp-up avoids being blacklisted. List segmentation and careful monitoring further contribute to deliverability.
Key findings
- Engagement Matters: Recipient engagement directly determines sender reputation.
- Consistent Volume: Consistent and gradually increasing email volume builds a positive sender reputation.
- Gradual Ramp-Up: A gradual ramp-up is essential for warming up new IPs and increasing volume.
- ISPs Overload: Staggering sends prevents overwhelming ISPs and triggering spam filters.
- Sending Limits: Respecting the sending limits imposed by ISPs is vital.
- O365 Consideration: O365 domains might require specific attention in deliverability strategies.
- Segment Lists: List segmentation and prioritizing engaged subscribers improves sending reputation.
Key considerations
- Ramp-Up Strategy: Implement a gradual ramp-up with staggered sends for new IPs.
- Schedule Modification: Adjust sending schedules to address reputation issues, especially with Microsoft domains.
- Sending Limits: Adhere to sending limits to prevent throttling and potential blocking.
- Consistent Schedule: Implement a sending schedule to keep the rate steady and consistent.
- Monitor Reputation: Monitor sending reputation metrics to identify and resolve deliverability problems.
- List Hygiene: Segment lists and prioritize subscribers that are highly engaged for best results.
What email marketers say
12 marketer opinions
Staggering email sends is crucial for improving sender reputation and avoiding throttling. This involves gradually increasing sending volume, especially when warming up new IP addresses or after periods of inactivity. Consistent engagement, as measured by recipients' interactions, significantly impacts sender reputation. By staggering sends, email marketers can avoid overwhelming ISPs, build a positive reputation, bypass spam filters, maintain steady sending volumes, respect sending limits, and demonstrate legitimacy to ISPs.
Key opinions
- Engagement Matters: Recipient engagement directly determines sender reputation, regardless of email type.
- Avoid Overwhelm: Staggering sends prevents overwhelming ISPs, reducing the risk of throttling or bounces.
- Consistent Volume: Maintaining consistent sending volumes through staggered sends helps establish a positive sender reputation.
- Gradual Warm-up: A gradual ramp-up, with staggered sends, is essential for warming up new IP addresses and building a good reputation.
- Legitimacy: Increasing volume slowly allows ISPs to recognize legitimate senders, improving deliverability.
- Bypass spam traps: Staggering campaigns aids in not overwhelming servers and hitting spam traps, allowing for improved reputation and deliverability.
Key considerations
- Warm-up Strategy: Implement a well-defined email warm-up strategy with properly scheduled and staggered sends.
- Sending Limits: Adhere to sending limits imposed by ISPs to prevent throttling and potential blocking.
- Consistent Scheduling: Develop a scheduling strategy to maintain a steady sending rate and avoid being marked as spam.
- List Segmentation: Segment list and send emails to engaged subscribers first.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests staggering sends to avoid overwhelming sensitive ISPs, potentially preventing throttling or bouncing.
18 Sep 2021 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Email marketer from Postmark shares the benefits of using a well-planned scheduling strategy to prevent being marked as spam. By staggering your sends you maintain a steady rate.
9 Apr 2024 - Postmark
What the experts say
6 expert opinions
Staggering email sends is important for building a positive sender reputation and avoiding throttling. Sending emails over a longer period demonstrates consistent engagement and IP activity, which is beneficial to ISPs. Gradual ramp-up strategies, involving a slow increase in sending volume, are crucial for new IPs or when increasing volume significantly. Segmenting email lists and prioritizing engaged subscribers can further enhance sender reputation. Avoiding large bursts of emails also reduces the likelihood of hitting spam traps and overwhelming servers.
Key opinions
- Consistent Engagement: Staggering sends over a longer period shows consistent engagement and IP activity.
- Gradual Ramp-Up: Gradual ramp-up is important for new IPs or significantly increased sending volume.
- Segmentation Benefits: Segmenting lists and sending to engaged subscribers improves sender reputation.
- Avoiding Bursts: Staggering avoids overwhelming servers and hitting spam traps.
- Microsoft Reputation: Modifying send schedules (splitting sends) can resolve reputation issues with Microsoft.
- O365 Consideration: A significant portion of deliverability issues may be related to O365 hosted domains.
Key considerations
- Schedule Modification: Consider modifying sending schedules to avoid reputation issues, especially with Microsoft.
- IP Warm-Up: Plan a gradual warm-up for new IPs by increasing emails slowly.
- Monitor Reputation: Regularly monitor sending reputation metrics to identify and address issues.
- List Hygiene: Focus on sending to engaged subscribers to boost reputation.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks shares a case where a client modified their monthly send schedule to resolve reputation issues with Microsoft by splitting it into multiple sends.
14 May 2024 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks suspects that the 25% of emails in 'email jail' are actually O365 hosted domains due to matching symptoms.
3 Jun 2023 - Email Geeks
What the documentation says
4 technical articles
Staggering email sends is crucial for maintaining a positive sender reputation and avoiding throttling, according to documentation from Google, Microsoft, RFC, and SparkPost. All providers use rate limiting to protect against abuse. Gradual increase in volume creates a good sender reputation and sending emails in a staggered manner is preferable to avoid being blacklisted.
Key findings
- Protect Against Abuse: Gmail uses sending limits to protect against abuse.
- Consistent Volume: Consistent and gradually increasing email volume builds a positive sender reputation with Microsoft domains.
- Avoid Blacklisting: Staggering emails, following the SMTP protocol, avoids blacklisting due to abuse.
- Respect Limits: Respecting sending limits established by ISPs is essential to avoid rate limits from SparkPost and other providers.
Key considerations
- Sending limits: Stay within the limits of email providers.
- Consistent Deliverability: Schedule emails to keep delivery consistent.
- Protocol adherence: Follow the rules of SMTP protocol, as it is a very common source for issues.
- Monitor Sending Volume: Avoid sending emails in large bursts, instead schedule them.
Technical article
Documentation from SparkPost details the importance of respecting the sending limits established by ISPs. Sending emails in large bursts may trigger rate limits, but scheduling sends helps keep the delivery consistent.
19 Mar 2025 - SparkPost
Technical article
Documentation from Google explains that Gmail uses sending limits to protect their systems and prevent abuse. Staggering sends and staying within these limits can prevent throttling and ensure that emails are delivered.
5 Mar 2022 - Google
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