Hi @AmyMOMO,

This is an excellent question! 

From my experience, if a brand I’ve worked with is having a sale that they want to send out to a broader user group, I will typically send to an expanded engaged segment rather than blasting the entire list. On average, 1.5x-2x the size of the current engaged segment. 

The primary reason for this is to avoid negative impacts to email deliverability and sender reputation. Email deliverability refers to the placement of an email after it is successfully delivered to the recipient’s mail server. Good email deliverability allows your emails to land in your recipient's main inbox (as opposed to spam folders). 

The 4 main points to consider that influence email deliverability and your reputation as a sender:

1. Your sending habits 
2. Who you send to
3. The content of your email
4. Your sending infrastructure

So in your case, if you are sending to unengaged users and a high volume of emails are undelivered due to bounces, this can also impact your email delivery (another component of email deliverability) and thusly diminish your sender reputation.

Now, will sending 1 email to your entire list damage your sender reputation irreparably? No. But, it is generally believed that it takes about 30 days to repair your sender reputation after full list sends. 

If you would like further information on understanding email deliverability, you can check out this Help Center article here. 

--

Hope this helps!

-- Ashley Ismailovski

Thanks so much Ashley!

That makes total sense. Appreciate your quick response.

Cheers, Amy

@AmyMOMO Glad I could help! 

Since, @Ashley I. has already answered the question. Great response btw.

I’d like to add a few cents from my end (just in case it’s not missed out) - 

1. Sending emails to all your contacts at once is never recommended, that’s where segmentation comes into play. Segment you entire list into 4 main cohorts:
   1. Core Audience: Users engaged in the last 90 days (Recommended. Active emailing stream)
   2. Lesser engaged audience: Users engaged in the last 91-180 days (Can be included with above under controlled frequency)
   3. Unengaged audience: Users not engaged at all in the last 180 days & between 181-365 days (Risky audience. However, clean & validate them regularly and keep adding a smaller portion with your active emailing stream once a week or once in 2 weeks - 80% active:20%lesser/unengaged)
   4. Dormant audience: Users not engaged with emails at all in the last 365 days and beyond. (Not recommended for email targeting) - Reach out via different channel.
2. Avoid sending emails to any inactive audience (referring to above – unengaged / dormant). Rather, you can plan a re-engagement program for your unengaged audience and reach out to dormant/inactive users from SMS channel for campaigns or plan a profile enrichment program to get their PII updated and re-subscribe for emails.
3. Ensure targeting the clean, validated & contactable users and avoid sending to any bounce addresses. Implement a 3rd party email validation on webforms.
4. Avoid sending in a batch & blast/sudden high volumes approach, which could hamper the reputation and trigger spam filters to filter out your emails.
5. Closely monitor your reputation, spam complaints & delivery errors on Postmaster and Inbox placement rates on deliverability monitoring tool as you incorporate lesser engaged or inactive audience to coverup your whole audience.

Hi Mohsin,

Thanks so much - this is super helpful. Really appreciate you taking the time to provide me such a detailed response.

Cheers, Amy :)​​​​​​

Glad it was helpful. Any further questions, feel free to message me