Shared IP and Volume of Sends

[Chelsey_Davis]

Hello,

We're planning on sending ~160,000 emails next week. We're currently on a shared IP, and our current deliverability seems to be fine. My question is, we haven't sent nearly this amount of emails before (the most we've sent at once has been about 400 or so), so is there anything I should be concerned about, or should we be good to send with no issues?

Thanks!

Chelsey

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[ChristinaZuniga]

If you are on Marketo's regular shared server then I'm not aware of any rules around number of sends. However, if you are on the trusted level of shared server then you are capped at 75,000 email sends in a 30 day period. Deliverability is MUCH better on the trusted level of shared server so before you send I would double check to make sure you are not on that level and subject to the cap.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I'd be deeply concerned about the consequences of such a sudden and steep ramp-up.

It's not about the volume itself as the error (i.e. inadvertent spam) rate. 400 is so low, you won't detect anomalies that could come out brutally when you exponentially increase the volume.

[Chelsey_Davis]

Thanks, Sanford. What anomalies might you be referring to?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Here are a few examples:

let's say in your DB, you have a list of 200 people from the same company. When you were selecting 400 leads, only a 1 or 2 of them were in the addressee list. 2 people receiving the same email from the same sender is a no brainer for the receiving system. Imaging that all of a sudden the same receiving email server receives 200 emails. It will surely block you as a sender after 20 or 30 and the vast majority of the addressees will never see the email. Furthermore, you will be blacklisted in this company with almost no possibility to remove you from the blacklist.

It can be even worse when the receiving servers are gmail or outlook.com

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yep, and I'm also talking about human spam complaints. Small numbers of forgetful people -- people who forgot they opted-in -- won't impact your reputation. A gigantic leap in people reporting your emails as spam, even if they are objectively incorrect, will be very bad.

[Chelsey_Davis]

I can see that. I guess I should have prefaced this by saying that these email addresses are already in our database and receive email communication from their utility company regularly, whom we send on behalf of for certain items. So this is a B2C email send. These emails come from a separate ESP (SendGrid), but we needed to utilize a token functionality which we can do from Marketo. So we're simply sending from a different ESP to a list of people we already send to.

[SanfordWhiteman]

OK, if they're all accustomed to receiving emails from your same domain, with the same domain referenced in the body, then I'd be less worried about the human factor mentioned above.

But Greg's points about automatic spam/hammering detection still stand, for sure.

[Chelsey_Davis]

Thanks, Sanford!

I think I'm going to break the batches up and send ~10,000 per hour over two days for the first 80,000. And then do the same for the next 80,000. I'm hoping we don't run into any issues...

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Chelsey,

The risk is real here, especially if you never had the chance to test the validity of all your email addresses or if you have large representation of free email providers in your addressees.

Sending 400 email at a time made you stay below the radar on all receivers, which means you also never have the chance to build up your reputation.

-Greg

[Chelsey_Davis]

But is it still a real risk if we're on a shared IP and therefore not necessarily in control of our IP reputation? We haven't gone the dedicated route yet b/c we're not planning to send this amount of emails frequently.

Thanks,

Chelsey

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[Steven_Vanderb3]

You still have to worry about your brand reputation even on a shared IP.

[Chelsey_Davis]

Thanks, Steven. Of course everyone should still be concerned about brand reputation regardless of dedicated or shared IP!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Sorry, my bad, I answered too fast, I read "dedicated" and not "shared"

160000 is not such a big deal on a shared one. Yet, I would probably divide it in 4 parts of 40000 for the first send. you might want to use random samples here. the main risk is that, if one of your addressee's email server receives a few hundreds of emails, you end up blacklisted, but that risk will always be there anyway.

-Greg

[Chelsey_Davis]

Thanks, Grégoire! I'm planning to send to 80,000 next week and then the rest the following week, so hopefully that's broken up enough?