How to email massive volume quickly

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

(I'm not sure I have the right board for posting - please guide me to a more appropriate place)

Given the current environment, we are being asked how it would be possible to email out a blast that would increase our normal daily email volume by ~300% (for ~7 days). I'm extremely alarmed (as I'm sure anyone reading this would be) about accomplishing this without hurting our Sender Score and IP reputation, but I'm being pressed for creative solutions. 

I'm thinking either using a different IP address (Mail Chimp, or ?), or negotiating an extended timeline where we can very slowly increase our daily email volume to include more and more of the desired target audience.

Any advice, creative solutions, or resources -  as quickly as possible would be incredibly helpful.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Possible? Of course: Marketo doesn't (unless you're on the trusted IP range) bill by # of sends.

What part of the pandemic environment requires that you send 4x your usual volume of marketing (as opposed to operational) emails?

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

Thanks @SanfordWhiteman , as we've all seen - they want to send out an massive 'here's what we're doing about this situation' email to every member we have in our database (which results in 4x our normal daily volume for ~7 days). Their opinion is it doesn't feel 'operational' enough, so it would be a marketing email (with unsubscribe option) - but I'm extremely concerned about the impact to sender score if we suddenly increase volume to this level.

Should I not be? 

We have a separate IP address through a different system that typically handles all transactional/operational emails - but there is resistance to using that system.

It sounds like the scenario I'm being faced with is to make it happen in Marketo (which it can) but the repercussions are what feel like like a blind spot. How quickly will it impact sender score, how badly will it impact our emails from being delivered, how quickly can we recover, etc.

Really appreciate any insights/guidance.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Thanks @SanfordWhiteman , as we've all seen - they want to send out an massive 'here's what we're doing about this situation' email to every member we have in our database (which results in 4x our normal daily volume for ~7 days). Their opinion is it doesn't feel 'operational' enough, so it would be a marketing email (with unsubscribe option) - but I'm extremely concerned about the impact to sender score if we suddenly increase volume to this level.

Should I not be? 

Oh, you should be concerned.  But how often do you contact these people in general?  If you hit those same people within the last month without issue that's a lot better than if you haven't contacted some of them for years.

And what is that volume, to the nearest 50K, that you're now multiplying by 4?

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

@SanfordWhiteman - normally ~30k/day to ~50-90k/day (starting with adding 20k on day 1, and building up to 60k/day in less than 2 weeks).

This is the current hypothetical they are proposing we do.

I've proposed splitting between our marketing IP and a separate IP that is hosted in our backend system that sends all of our transactional emails. But they are worried that this would then impact the transactional emails from being delivered (not knowing the daily volume or sender score on that IP - I can't counter the argument).

If I could propose a safer/lower risk approach - that could get these emails out in about the same amount of time - any ideas?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Are these people recently engaged (provably, not just Clicked Email which can just as well be a mail scanner) and/or have they recently received emails?

The safest thing, relatively, that you could do is use a different IP address altogether, though your domain could still enter a DNSBL of course.

My main concern is whether you're hitting long-inactive leads for the first time in months, which is going to spark suspicion. Not so much the # of messages. 

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

@SanfordWhiteman - they'll be giving us a list, but I built a prospective list I suspect they will be giving us and it looks like ~25% may have opened or clicked an email in the past 6 months. 

So, not relatively recently engaged - in my opinion.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Clicks and opens both happen automatically. So is there any reliable measure of engagement from these folks?

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

Understanding your point (I think) about opens/clicks happening automatically (images being downloaded or bots clicking) - but not sure what else we could look for to prove, could you enlighten me? 

Regardless, I'm not feeling great about a blast to a list of leads who have (albeit automatically) opened or clicked an email less than 25% of the time in the last 6 months. Typically we have a good audience when we do reach out, so I'm wondering if the concern would be associated with getting too many complaints/SPAM flags, or is it predominately about having the email well-engaged with?

Really appreciate your insights @SanfordWhiteman .

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Understanding your point (I think) about opens/clicks happening automatically (images being downloaded or bots clicking) - but not sure what else we could look for to prove, could you enlighten me? 

Regardless, I'm not feeling great about a blast to a list of leads who have (albeit automatically) opened or clicked an email less than 25% of the time in the last 6 months. Typically we have a good audience when we do reach out, so I'm wondering if the concern would be associated with getting too many complaints/SPAM flags, or is it predominately about having the email well-engaged with?

Really appreciate your insights @SanfordWhiteman .

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Regardless, I'm not feeling great about a blast to a list of leads who have (albeit automatically) opened or clicked an email less than 25% of the time in the last 6 months. Typically we have a good audience when we do reach out, so I'm wondering if the concern would be associated with getting too many complaints/SPAM flags, or is it predominately about having the email well-engaged with?

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It's about a sudden spark in the % of complaints, because even though you can tolerate a small number of spurious "I didn't sign up for this" complaints (even if they did) you don't want to multiply that suddenly.

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

Thank you @SanfordWhiteman  - this makes perfect sense. 

Not sure I have any leverage in negotiating the audience, size, or how quickly we'll be asked to push the entire volume out. 

Any other tips/strategies you might recommend for me attempting to execute this? 

If not, you've already thoroughly helped me speak to this more articulately, so thank you.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Honestly there's nothing else you can do except push to space it out. People are definitely doing the send-to-everyone thing because of the virus. And also recipients are likely not thinking as aggressively about whether they know a company. Both will probably offer you some cover.

[Kirstin_Mahoney]

Wanted to provide an update on how this is going so far.

We've been slowly ramping up the volume for the last week, with the biggest volume jumps occurring over the new few days.

Open rates have held strong, as well as a low unsubscribe.

Our Sender Score had not moved until today, dropped from 99 to 97.

I fear we may start to see this decline, but am happy to see that we've been able to deter it from occurring for at least the first week.

Now I want to start preparing for what we might need to do if we DO see a massive drop to Sender Score. 

IT seems to think that there is not a delivery difference until you get into the 70's. I don't know that I'd agree with that, but don't have any proof as to what the threshold is or when we can expect our metrics to change.

In the meantime, I'm thinking I'll research Return Path and strategize on how we can ensure that we are only sending emails to leads who are most likely to open/click the emails - and potentially reducing emails to those who are less likely, as a "triage" type move to try and recover (if it comes to that). 

Open to other ideas/suggestions. Or insights that might calm my nerves.

[Alyssa_Sarmient]

In the same boat so following the thread.

I assumed even if we flagged it as an. Operational email, could it potentially hit spamtraps or have other impacts due to the volume?

[SanfordWhiteman]

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I assumed even if we flagged it as an. Operational email, could it potentially hit spamtraps or have other impacts due to the volume?

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Of course, it will not be treated any differently if it is sent from Marketo, my question was to clarify why these emails must be sent via a marketing platform in the first place.