It’s no doubt the holiday season is upon us—stores start stocking shelves even before Halloween, and the flow of peppermint abounds! Simultaneously, emails surge, creating an overwhelming amount of digital noise as every marketer vies for a piece of the sales pie. Every industry has its “seasonality,” and ensuring your email program is in tip-top shape is an absolute must to maximize your chances of reaching the inbox.

Starting Late? Don’t Panic, But Don’t Rush!

Deliverability is a long game but, we get it, the countdown to the holidays is on. Rest assured, there are some “quick wins” you can execute fairly quickly to help ensure your emails are on the nice list (land in the inbox) and help achieve your holiday marketing goals.

Best Practice 1: Check Your List… Twice

I know, I know… cutting down your audience size feels counterintuitive to sales goals. But here’s the cold, hard truth: if your engagement metrics are low, mailbox providers (MBPs) are already pushing your emails to spam—meaning you aren’t reaching those users anyway. Now is not the time to blast your entire list and risk getting permanently blocklisted. Focus on your most active audience first, to not only help boost your sender reputation, but also to maximize ROI of your marketing efforts.

Best Practice 2: Match Content to Segment (Don’t Make Your CRO Mad)

You must be VERY mindful of your segmentation and coinciding offers. Double-check that your calls to action (CTAs) and the value you’re offering truly align with your audience. To ensure quality, scrub spammy keywords (especially from subject lines) and balance text-to-image ratios. If you don’t, you run the immediate risk of high unsubscribe rates, low revenue return, and—let’s be honest—a Chief Revenue Officer looking over your shoulder wondering what went wrong.

Best Practice 3: Embrace the Deliverability Relationship

Mailbox providers reward bulk senders who follow best practices consistently—and that includes maintaining a predictable send volume and cadence.

If you must temporarily cut back your audience size, do so. Then, as your engagement metrics start showing improvement, slowly reintroduce those who have been unengaged.

This process will look different for everyone, but the general rule is to target those who have been unengaged most recently and work your way down. Think of it like an IP warming process designed to gently re-engage contacts you haven’t spoken to in a year or more.

The Golden Rule of Email Deliverability

Email deliverability is like a relationship and your sender reputation is a fragile gift: You need to build trust with your audience, incorporate personalization based on their preferences, and don’t overcommunicate—or your brand will just be known as a spammer.

Dive deeper: Download our whitepaper, Email Best Practices & Industry Trends Guide which includes key factors to ensure deliverability and reach the inbox

Reach out to our experts at Shift Paradigm today for a complimentary high-level deliverability review to give you some early insights on how to improve your sender health.