Manually stagger your email sends to avoid low open rates and high bounces.
Want to improve email open rates and minimise bounces? Stagger the sending of your emails.
Imagine if your marketing emails could reach your audience without triggering spam filters or getting bounced. It's totally possible with this hack! If you're currently sending all your emails in one go, you might be inadvertently causing multiple recipients within a single organisation to get your email simultaneously, overwhelming their server - that's why you need to stagger it.
If you don't have the budget for tools like SeventhSense who automatically sends your email at the exact time your prospect needs, then follow these steps.
Step 1: Decide on how to segment
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Option 1 - Create multiple lists of your email recipients segmented by job title or other property like industry. This gives you a little more control over how you are splitting up your list for sending
- Go to Contacts > Lists.
- Click on Create List.
- Define the criteria for each segment. For example, job title is 'marketing manager' or 'director of marketing'.
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Option 2 - Randomly split your contacts using the "split list" functionality. This feature is especially useful when you lack the necessary data to segment by specific criteria, such as job title. It also allows you to review each list thoroughly, ensuring accuracy and appropriateness before sending out your emails.
- Go to Contacts > Lists.
- Find your list of contacts you need to email.
- Click 'More' > 'Split List'
- Decide on how many times you'd like to split this. If your list is 5000+ you may want to split this 5 times. Once you've decided and specified that, click 'Create Lists'. They'll now appear in your lists as '[Original list name] - Split 1/Split 2'
- Option 3 - Randomly split in the workflow itself. Steps for this will be included below but this option means you can't review or control how the list is split.
Step 2: Set up a Workflow
- Navigate to Automation > Workflows.
- Click on Create workflow and select Start from scratch.
- Choose contact-based.
- Set the enrolment triggers based on the list membership you created in option 1.
- Use the branch logic to create a branch for each list using the and/or logic. Note: if you are going for option 3 and want to split in the workflow then you would instead select the split branch option and enter how many times you want the list split.
- For each branch you can now add a delay in. Click on the + button, select Delay. For example:
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- Segment 1: Send at 8 AM
- Segment 2: Send at 10 AM
- Segment 3: Send at 12 PM
- Segment 4: Send at 2 PM
- Segment 5: Send at 4 PM
Add the next action, click on the + button, select Send an email, and choose the email you want to send.
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If you're not sure when to schedule your emails, start by tracking open rates for different segments. This way, you'll find out the best times to reach your audience. As you gather more data, you'll get to know your audience's habits better and can fine-tune your email strategy for even better engagement.
Author: Bridget Pyne
Marketing Manager