When it comes to making connections with customers throughout the holiday shopping season, email marketing “sleighs” at being one of the best and most effective ways to reach them. But with the increased volume of emails during the holidays, how do you make sure your 2023 email campaigns will be delivered?

For email to have the best chance at arriving in a recipient’s inbox, it’s especially important during the holiday season to:

Keep your email brief
Make it valuable and personalized (worth a reader’s time/attention)
Target it to the right audience
Maintain a good sender reputation (more on this below)

Marketers who want to stay on the “nice” list will find the most sending success by following these 8 best practices.

1. Verify that your emails are authenticated

Acoustic ensures that your domains are setup with SPF and DKIM when they are initially provisioned so you can send authenticated emails. But settings can/do change over time so it's important to verify that your emails are successfully authenticating today. Because many customers host their own domains and DNS entries, these settings can be modified over time, often by accident. Another common mistake is for a domain to be mistyped in the UI when building your emails. ISPs, including Gmail, are beginning to take a much more aggressive approach to enforce email authentication. So, to minimize the likelihood of your emails bouncing or being marked as spam, it’s important to check and ensure you have proper SPF and DKIM configured.

2. Clean mailing lists

Late September/early October is the best time to clean up mailing lists. Check your lists “twice!” for recipients that didn’t opt in, have misspelled addresses, are old/inactive addresses, and spam trap addresses. Removing as many of those bad addresses as possible not only assists with maintaining healthy IP and Domain reputation but also mitigates the risk of messages being blocked or going to spam when email volume increases during the holidays.

3. Provide value

Providing value increases the chance of converting potential customers. That value can also trigger more engagement with the emails being sent. These types of engagements (opens, clicks) assist with IP and Domain reputation, increasing the ability to consistently get mail delivered. Conversely, if value is not provided, and volume is increased, email will be more prone to non-engagement and/or spam complaints. Both of which make it harder to get into the recipient’s inbox if your sending reputation starts to drop.

4. Leverage inbox and seed list testing

By using inbox and/or seed list testing, there will be more visibility into an email’s performance before a production send. This gives time to cleanup an email if there is any issue with the content that may be causing the message to be blocked or go to spam.

Pro tip: Sending email to a personal free email address (think Yahoo, Gmail) is a great way to test an email. You will get to see exactly where the inbox provider is placing the mail. Be careful about moving the message to a different folder as that can change where email lands for future testing to that inbox.

5. Send to an engaged audience

Your most engaged recipients are most likely to be your biggest ROI for your email marketing communications. Targeting these individuals should be a high priority for sending. A common mistake is introducing stagnant/old email addresses into these holiday sends. This only increases the risk of not being able to deliver if the old addresses result in complaints and/or non-engagement. If the ability to deliver to the inbox is compromised, then it will lower the chance of getting email to the most engaged recipients.

6. Monitor IP and domain reputation

Having a good reputation makes a difference when inbox providers determine what folder email will be placed. For more about IP and domain reputation management and how to monitor, check out this helpful article here.

Pro tip: Aim to keep your spam rate below 0.10%. Maintaining a low spam rate makes senders more resilient to occasional spikes in user feedback. And, keep in mind: Google does not explicitly track open rates and doesn’t verify the accuracy of open rates reported by third parties. Low open rates may not be an accurate indicator of deliverability or spam classification issues.

7. Optimize on all channels

Ensuring your messages look sleek and visually appealing across all devices is even more important during holiday sending. Consumers are overloaded with email that is vying for their attention. Making sure messages are brief, appealing, and generally easy to navigate will help with grabbing and keeping your audience’s attention.

8. Get ahead of Black Friday

Black Friday is typically when the email floodgates open. We strongly recommend sending messages one to two weeks ahead. This can help you capture attention before recipients are bombarded with messages. Getting email sent before Black Friday can also mean more speedy delivery times because the inbox provider is not as bogged down with incoming email.

At Acoustic, we know how important the holiday shopping season is for increasing revenue and building stronger customer connections. Let us help make sure your holiday email campaigns are sent and delivered successfully.

Wishing you joyful holidays and much success delivering holiday cheer this season!

How to Get Your 2023 Holiday Emails on the “Nice” List: 8 Delivery Best Practices