Release 6 – August 2022

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New Enhancements & Features

Optimized Email Sending Volumes

Deliver More Emails: Send Fewer at Once

Reduce spam and increase inbox deliverability. It is easier than ever to deliver emails to inboxes!With precise and dynamic controls, warming up a new domain, avoiding dangerous spikes in volume, and elevating results with A/B testing have never been easier.

Why

As spam filter algorithms expand, EMP likewise aims to ensure delivering emails to inboxes is as easy and predictable as possible. There are many factors that we track and optimize for, but one major reason emails go to spam is a sudden spike in the number of emails sent from your EMP account (e.g. 1000 emails per day for a month, and then 30,000+ emails sent the next day).

This is especially dangerous when many of those emails are sent to prospects you haven’t emailed before, engagement with the email is poor and/or when you have a new email domain that is being “warmed up.”

What

In the past, to cap the number of students sent an email – or split an audience for A/B testing, a custom group(s) would need to be created, such as A-M and N-Z last names and tweaked until the rough count was reached. Imprecise and time-consuming groups needed to be constantly rotated on campaigns. This “workaround” approach was due for replacement.

The EMP team is excited to announce an optional email “per send” limit that is easy to setup/maintain that over time will boost inbox deliverability, and thus student engagement.

With this limit – which can be exact or dynamic, rising as your account’s average daily emails grow – you can smooth out your campaign emails, allowing more time to assess efficacy and adjust content as needed, while having confidence that someone uploading a new list will not result in an unexpected, dangerous spike.

This optional email “per send” limit will ONLY

How

While “the smoother, the better” is true, a good best practice is to send within 50% (+/-) of your 30-day running average of emails sent per day.

For example, if your 30-day running average for 7/15/22 is 1,000 emails sent per day, your ideal range is 500 - 1,500 emails for that day.

Since you may have multiple emails scheduled each day, you should take those campaigns’ current and future audiences, and timing, into account when configuring their limits. If you prefer to use EMP’s dynamic default cap per email, we will calculate 10% of your 30-day running average (and update that number each day).

The 30-day running average is calculated every day. If the 30-day running average for emails sent on 7/15/22 is 1,000; if you send 1,500 emails on 7/15/22, then the 30-day running average for 7/16/22 will be larger than 1,000.

Example:

Your 30-day running average is 1,000 emails. 10% of 1,000 is 100. All NEW email items, for every track, for every campaign (in blast, nurture, and event), will send 100 emails each time that they are sent.

In the example below, the new email item that was created will automatically have the “Use Optimized Sending Limit” checked off. Each time the email is sent, it will use 10% of that date’s 30-day running average as the sending limit.

If the email is sent on 7/20/22, it will use 10% of the 30-day running average that was calculated on 7/20/22 as the sending limit
If the email is then sent on 8/1/22, it will use 10% of the 30-day running average that was calculated on 8/1/22 as the sending limit.

All existing email items, for every track, for every campaign (in blast, nurture, and event) will have no limit attached to them.

In the example below, tier 1 and tier 2 were created before the feature came into existence, so there is no limit attached to them. There are three options you can make for your existing emails:

Leave them with no limit (Not recommended)

Create your own sending limit for the email item by clicking “Edit Details”, ensuring “Use Optimized Sending Limit” is unchecked, and writing the value you need the email item to have (500, for example).

Press “Edit Details” and check the box for “Use Global Sending Limit”

Q & A

What happens if more than 10% of your 30-day delivered running average is eligible to receive each email item?

Let's assume that 10% of your 30-day running average is 100, but there are 500 students eligible to receive the email item that day.

Of the 500 students eligible to receive the email, it will be sent to the 100 students with the highest interaction rating. If the next day’s 10% of the 30-day running average is 200, it will be sent to 200 students with the highest interaction rating. This cycle will continue every day.

Nothing beats the spam filter better than students engaging with emails.

EMP will prioritize sending your emails first to the students who are most engaged and interested in your institution.

Where can I find my 30-day delivered running average?

All EMP clients (with email campaigns) have an Email Analytics page. You can reach this page in EMP by clicking on "Analytics", and then clicking" Email Analytics".

Scrolling down the Email Analytics page, you will see a chart called "Delivered Running Average", which you can see below.

The chart is filtered to only show the 30-day running average, so we are seeing the average daily number of delivered emails in the past 30 days. As of 8/2/22, this account has averaged around 760 emails per day in the last 30 days.

What if I need to send more than 10% of my 30-day delivered running average?

Many times, during the academic year, there are emails that need to be sent to a large population of students in a short amount of time. Some examples of this are:

Application deadline
Housing deposit deadline
Events

This is okay! You can set a limit on each individual item to whatever count you expect is needed. Try to spread out the sends over as much time as you have, but the choice is yours

Open the “Edit Details” on an email and expand the “Email Settings” section > scroll to the bottom and enter the number you desire under “Max Email Sends”:

How do I use this limit to improve my email engagement?

Send your first email to 10% of your list. Check your engagement stats against your expected engagement stats. Evaluate what your students are opening and clicking on and make some changes to the content or subject line if the results are low. Send to another 10% of your list and see if your engagement rates have increased. If your engagement rates have increased, then send to the rest of your list. If not, repeat until you have increased engagement rates to your desired levels.

What if I need to send an email to a specific number of recipients for A/B testing purposes?

You can follow the same steps in the previous step above. Let’s assume that the specific number of recipients you need for A/B testing purposes is 500 recipients. You can set a 500 limit on each individual email you are using for the A/B test. EMP will always send it to students with the highest interaction ratings first, so be careful to construct your A/B test groups separately using an objective marker.

Example process for how to create an A/B test for a 2023 Search campaign:

Create the groups that you want to use for the A/B test:

A:
- Last name greater than or equal to M
- Stage = Prospect
- Entry year = 2023
B:
- Last name less than or equal to N
- Stage = Prospect
- Entry year = 2023
- These groups don’t have to be perfectly equal in size since you’ll be equalizing them when you set your limit per email item – Email A only sends to 500 and Email B only sends to 500.

Create the Campaign:

Create A&B versions of each email in the track
Assign the A group to the A emails
Assign the B group to the B emails
Set the same limit (500 in the example above) on each A&B email to ensure the same number of emails are sent (the top 500 number of engaged students in each email)

Compare results from the A/B test:

Identify which emails had the best engagement rates and the most inquiry conversions from each tier in the track.
Only send the better performing email version to everyone else in your list:
Track 1 – A/B test you just completed
Track 2 – Copy the higher performing email from each tier in track 1 into track 2. Send track 2 to everyone else in your list.

What if I need to send most emails at a higher rate?

(Not recommended) You can choose to opt out of the pre-calculated number of emails that are sent by clicking on "EMP Settings", and then "Email Settings". By unchecking the box that says, "Use daily optimized value", however, EMP will no longer pre-calculate the number of emails per item that are sent.

You can then set your own limit for the number of email sends per item.

Now, emails will default to being sent 10,000 times each time they run, but they are still overridden on an individual basis.

NOTE: Changing the “Max Email Sends Per Item” at the account level (as shown I the screenshot above), will ONLY change the default maximum number that shows up for NEW emails created AFTER the change was made.

Thus, the 10,000-email limit from the example above will be the limit for all NEW emails created AFTER that 10,000-email limit was saved. All emails that existed before this change to 10,000 was made will not have the 10,000-email limit.

Do emails that have existed BEFORE I changed the account-level Max Email Sends per Item have a sending maximum?

All existing campaigns will continue to run as they always have been – with no limit.

This is not recommended!

We strongly recommend going into your active emails and adding in a maximum number. You can choose to use the daily optimized value that was discussed earlier, or you can manually place a numerical value. A strong practice is looking at your Max Email Sends per Item in Email Settings, dividing the number by 10, and enter that number for all active emails.

For example, if your Max Email Sends per Item in Email Settings is 10,000, dividing that by 10 is 1,000. Thus, 1,000 should be the number that you enter for all active emails.

Note: Adding limits to your campaigns that include Prospects and Inquiries are of utmost importance. Prospects and Inquiries have the largest population of students who will not engage with emails – making dangerous spikes in email volume even more damaging to your email sending reputation.