Expert Problem Solver IV

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Gradual Send Vs. Fixed Send Time

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
August 7, 2024
10 replies
1440 views

First, I have read using segments and recipients time zone, and the pros and cons of using a fixed send time - thank you for these insights, @In the Inbox and @ArpitBanjara!

Part 1 - Basic question - short version:

If I choose gradual send, there is no checkbox for “determine recipients at send time”, so my guess is that Klaviyo does not re-evaluate who qualifies for the segment/list at send time, if I pre-schedule the send – is this correct?

I swear there used to be a check box for the gradual send option, but I can’t prove it. Also, I found 2 help articles that *seem* to contradict each other, so I’m not sure which is correct. Below are links to the articles, with relevant screenshots.

Understanding campaign schedule and send options:

Only available when time zone is selected for fixed send, no re-evaluation

How to change when a campaigns recipients are determined:

Seems to indicate you can choose “determine at send time” as default, which is my setting

Part 2 - Longer version

When my company migrated to Klaviyo 2+ years ago, I was encouraged by the onboarding specialist to use gradual sends so that inbox providers wouldn’t get as many requests all at once, leading to less results of spam-like sending. For reference, we have almost 58,000 active profiles – I honestly don’t know if that is a lot or not, and how that number would affect inbox providers if all the emails were sent at once – but I am concerned about our emails getting blocked if I choose fixed send time.

However, I would really like our campaigns to be determined at send time, especially with BCFM coming up. Most of our subscribers are in the US/Eastern time zone, so I have been using that zone for the gradual sends. In addition, we have a custom integration and I’m not confident that the time zones for all our subscribers are correct, so selecting recipient’s time zone is also kind of scary.

Does anyone have any experience with gradual and fixed sends they can share? Or any insights as to whether I still need to use the gradual send to avoid being seen as spam?

Campaigns

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Best answer by ArpitBanjara

Hey @JessFosnough

Thanks for tagging me

Part 1 - Yes, that's correct. When you choose the "Gradual Send" option in Klaviyo, the recipients are determined at the time you schedule the campaign, not at the actual send time. This means that Klaviyo does not re-evaluate who qualifies for the segment or list at the send time. Instead, it sends the emails gradually over the specified period to the list of recipients that were determined when the campaign was scheduled.

For your point where you say that the articles contradicts, where you select in the Klaviyo settings, it is also mentioned that “This can be changed on a per campaign basis” so that would over-ride Klaviyo’s settings. So what I would suggest is to Keep the klaviyo settings to whichever you use more often - fixed send-time or gradual send-time, but if you decide to change to another, the campaign settings will over-ride Klaviyo settings.

I personally have used both - we had a couple of clients whose email campaigns were ‘drops’ , they used to sell cookies and they would go out out of stock in like 10 mins after they send the email campaign announcing the ‘drop’ - for such clients we have to use fixed send time, and they really had great open/ click rates and very less spam complaints. I use the same strategy depending on the season like BFCM etc.

For informational campaigns that doesn’t have an urgency, we usually use ‘gradual sends’ - however it depends on the type of products you are using.

But to answer your question in part 2 - I haven’t experienced anything that affected the spam rate as these inbox providers have filters and you build reputation overtime with them so they wouldn’t send to spam just because you are sending to a larger number of emails at the same time. These are just my thoughts and experiences and I could be wrong

I hope this helps

Cheers

Arpit

M

Maxbuzz

Partner

Hello @JessFosnough Gradual send is used when you are new to an email platform and is performing the IP warming to set a sender reputation. Because you were new to Klaviyo. that is why the onboarding specialist recommended to use the Gradual send.

Since you are using Klaviyo from last 2 years, it is not required to use Gradual sends until you want to reach out to everyone and the email is not time sensitive.

https://theforms.pro

JessFosnoughAuthor

Expert Problem Solver IV

Hi @Maxbuzz,

Thank you for the clarification!
You mentioned gradual sends aren’t required until you want to reach out to everyone and the email isn’t time sensitive - well, that describes the majority of our campaigns, haha! 😂

For background - we have brick & mortar stores in addition to an online store, and most of our emails feature a coupon to use at the store and/or online. We typically send campaigns twice a month, and about once a week during our 2 busiest seasons (4 months total out of the year). We have a sunset flow to regularly remove unengaged subscribers.

Since most of our campaigns are sent to “everyone”, would it be a good idea to continue gradual sends, except for time sensitive emails (ie, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.)?

Jessica

ArpitBanjaraAnswer

Principal User II

Hey @JessFosnough

Thanks for tagging me

Part 1 - Yes, that's correct. When you choose the "Gradual Send" option in Klaviyo, the recipients are determined at the time you schedule the campaign, not at the actual send time. This means that Klaviyo does not re-evaluate who qualifies for the segment or list at the send time. Instead, it sends the emails gradually over the specified period to the list of recipients that were determined when the campaign was scheduled.

For your point where you say that the articles contradicts, where you select in the Klaviyo settings, it is also mentioned that “This can be changed on a per campaign basis” so that would over-ride Klaviyo’s settings. So what I would suggest is to Keep the klaviyo settings to whichever you use more often - fixed send-time or gradual send-time, but if you decide to change to another, the campaign settings will over-ride Klaviyo settings.

I personally have used both - we had a couple of clients whose email campaigns were ‘drops’ , they used to sell cookies and they would go out out of stock in like 10 mins after they send the email campaign announcing the ‘drop’ - for such clients we have to use fixed send time, and they really had great open/ click rates and very less spam complaints. I use the same strategy depending on the season like BFCM etc.

For informational campaigns that doesn’t have an urgency, we usually use ‘gradual sends’ - however it depends on the type of products you are using.

But to answer your question in part 2 - I haven’t experienced anything that affected the spam rate as these inbox providers have filters and you build reputation overtime with them so they wouldn’t send to spam just because you are sending to a larger number of emails at the same time. These are just my thoughts and experiences and I could be wrong

I hope this helps

Cheers

Arpit

Arpit Banjara - Lead Email Marketing Specialist at Flowium

M

Maxbuzz

Partner

Hi @Maxbuzz,

Thank you for the clarification!
You mentioned gradual sends aren’t required until you want to reach out to everyone and the email isn’t time sensitive - well, that describes the majority of our campaigns, haha! 😂

For background - we have brick & mortar stores in addition to an online store, and most of our emails feature a coupon to use at the store and/or online. We typically send campaigns twice a month, and about once a week during our 2 busiest seasons (4 months total out of the year). We have a sunset flow to regularly remove unengaged subscribers.

Since most of our campaigns are sent to “everyone”, would it be a good idea to continue gradual sends, except for time sensitive emails (ie, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.)?

If you are sending email twice a month then you can use “Scheduled time” to send the email. By default Email smart Sending is configured to 16 hours to avoid sending multiple emails in a short time.

But for your use case, the Scheduled time will work as well and everyone will receive the email.

https://theforms.pro

G

Gutsu-

Contributor II

Hello @JessFosnough Gradual send is used when you are new to an email platform and is performing the IP warming to set a sender reputation. Because you were new to Klaviyo. that is why the onboarding specialist recommended to use the Gradual send.

Since you are using Klaviyo from last 2 years, it is not required to use Gradual sends until you want to reach out to everyone and the email is not time sensitive.

That’s not how you do an IP warming, you’d rather want to gradually increase the volume, not split it into equal parts.

Gradually send over time is rather used to throttle your send volume so you don’t deliver too much email in a single go, as it can be seen as spammy by mailbox providers. Or to balance the load to your own server if that’s something important to you.

However, it’s true that you can use throttling to increase your deliverability when your reputation isn’t properly set yet, but it’s not the same as warming the IP.

@JessFosnough Pretty sure I’ve seen that checkbox for the gradual send option in the past too 😅

D

dartacus

Problem Solver III

Since most of our campaigns are sent to “everyone”, would it be a good idea to continue gradual sends, except for time sensitive emails (ie, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.)?

This is exactly what we do, with a similar number of subs.

The rule of thumb is that if the email relates to limited stock or a limited time, then we send in one go in our own timezone, so that everyone gets a fair crack at the stock before it sells out. If it’s not *too* urgent (ie, it’s a normal offer where the stock will not sell out) then we will send in a few chunks using the send % per hour option, usually 50/50 is enough to stop the website becoming slightly slower for a few minutes due to an initial click-rush. Marginal but worth doing.

Normal marketing emails we trickle send in the customer’s own TZ. We also don’t worry too much about if that TZ is correct or not, they mostly will be and a few outliers don’t really matter. They’ll open the email whenever they open it anyway, the majority of emails are not opened straight away.

Also worth noting that unless it’s a very compelling offer, most people who buy via an email campaign buy something totally unrelated to the content of the email anyway. It just gets them on site, then they browse.

G

M

Maxbuzz

Partner

Hello @Gutsu- Yes, gradual increase is one for part of IP warming, just like using Gradual send feature. 😀

https://theforms.pro

JessFosnoughAuthor

Expert Problem Solver IV

@ArpitBanjara - Thanks so much for your response. I didn’t fully understand what “This can be changed on a per campaign basis” meant - but now I get it! Also appreciate your answer to part 2, I’m going to try a fixed send time and see how it goes.

Jessica

JessFosnoughAuthor

Expert Problem Solver IV

@Maxbuzz - Thanks again for your help! I’m going to try a fixed send.

Jessica

JessFosnoughAuthor

Expert Problem Solver IV

@Gutsu- Thanks for the vote of confidence that I’m not completely crazy about seeing that checkbox on gradual sends in the past, haha! And I *thought* I read somewhere that gradual sending can be used to avoid too much email at one time. I’ve been doing it for a while, so I’m going to test fixed sends.

Jessica

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