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Strategically build your sender reputation ahead of BFCM
Every brand fights for attention in the inbox on Black Friday Cyber Monday. But before your brilliant subject line can stand out from the crowd, you need to make sure the message reaches the inbox. Many brands will email their entire subscriber list multiple times during BFCM in an attempt to re-engage price-sensitive shoppers.
But sending to your full list without the right ramp-up plan could result in all your messages going to spam, and could seriously damage your sender reputation. That’s why Klaviyo’s delivery and compliance experts have created this guide for how to prep your account for a safe full list send that won’t tank your deliverability.
Why does sender reputation matter?
Landing in someone's inbox is not always straightforward. There are many factors that play into your sender reputation. In order to fully understand the recommendations in this playbook, take a few minutes to review why your sender reputation is so important to your email marketing efficacy.
Review these key principles before you begin
This playbook will walk you through the safest way to approach sending to your full email subscriber list during one of the biggest weekends of the year. Here are some north stars to keep in mind as you follow the guidance.
You should only send to your full list once or twice a year.
Sending to your full list should not be a frequent occurrence. Only put this into practice for major marketing initiatives, specifically BFCM. Outside of that, you should mainly focus on sending to a variety of engaged segments, with winback and sunset flows in place to help re-engage lapsed users the rest of the year.
Your primary audience should be your most engaged subscribers.
For the other 360+ days of the year outside of BFCM, your primary audience should be folks who engaged with you over the last 30, 60 or 90 days.
Email engagement is defined as opened or clicked.
Deliverability is influenced by email engagement, not onsite engagement. While metrics like Active on Site, Viewed Product, and Checkout Started are all valuable signs of brand engagement, they don’t have any direct impact on your sender reputation. Opens and clicks are the influential factors for deliverability.
Never increase your sending volume more than 2x your average volume in one send.
As you follow the guidance in this playbook, you should aim to increase your sending volume by 50% at a time. For example, if your primary engaged audience is 4,000 profiles, your first sending increase should get you to about 6,000 recipients, and should definitely not exceed 8,000.
Let's get ready to send!
Before continuing...
- Double-check that you’ve completed all the items on our Google/Yahoo sender requirements checklist.
- Benchmark where you’re at currently with your deliverability using the Deliverability Hub.
- Make a plan to improve any ‘Poor’ or ‘Needs attention’ metrics as a priority over the next month.
- Complete any personalized recommendations in your Action Center before following the guidance below.
If you've completed the checklist above, you're ready to move on to the next step for details on how to begin preparing your account for a successful full list send.