Your Holiday Emails Start Now: A Summer Deliverability Prep Guide
Your Holiday Emails Start Now: A Summer Deliverability Prep Guide
As the heat of summer fades, email marketers are already turning their attention to the busiest season of the year. Litmus warns that the first step toward a successful holiday campaign is to start the deliverability prep in July, before the traffic spikes of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
📊 Key Facts At A Glance
- →2 million holiday emails in 2024, a 15% year‑over‑year increase
What Happened
On July 12, Litmus released a new guide titled Your Holiday Emails Start Now: A Summer Deliverability Prep Guide, urging marketers to audit their lists and refine segmentation now. The guide comes amid rising spam filter strictness, as more ISPs tighten thresholds for new senders. In the same week, Microsoft published an update on its Sender Name Delivery Service (SNDS), revealing that 42% of its users had seen a decline in inbox placement due to spam trap hits.
Industry analysts note that the window between July and September is critical: a 24% increase in email volume is projected for the holiday period, and failure to act early can lock a campaign into a “bounce backlog” that takes weeks to clear.
Key Details
Litmus recommends that brands achieve a bounce rate below 2% by mid‑August. The guide lists three concrete actions: 1) clean your list using a third‑party verifier, 2) segment by engagement tier, and 3) test deliverability on all major ISPs. Microsoft’s SNDS now offers real‑time dashboards that flag “spam trap hits” and “complaint rates” per domain, allowing senders to react within 48 hours.
According to the SNDS data, 18% of email domains experienced a spike in complaint rates during the first week of July, correlating with a 5% dip in deliverability for those senders. Litmus also reports that 70% of retailers plan to send at least 1.2 million holiday emails in 2024, a 15% year‑over‑year increase.
Background
Deliverability has long been a silent driver of email ROI. In 2020, a study by Return Path found that only 27% of email marketers monitored inbox placement rates, and those that did saw a 30% lift in engagement. The new Litmus guide builds on that research, adding a seasonal angle: the “summer prep” phase is now a recognized best practice.
Microsoft’s SNDS, introduced in 2018, was designed to give senders visibility into how their messages perform across the Microsoft ecosystem. The recent update expands its metrics to include filter status and spam trap hits, offering a more granular view than the previous “spam complaint” metric alone.
Why It Matters
For brands, the stakes are high. A single day of poor deliverability on Black Friday can cost an average of $3,500 in lost sales per 10,000 emails, according to a 2023 Forrester report. By addressing list hygiene and segmentation in July, marketers can reduce bounce rates by up to 1.5%—a change that translates into thousands of additional conversions.
Moreover, ISPs increasingly penalize senders who fail to maintain clean lists. “If you’re not cleaning your list by mid‑August, you’re likely to see a 10–12% drop in inbox placement on the first holiday send,” says Emily Chen, senior analyst at Litmus. The SNDS dashboard now allows senders to see that drop in real time, enabling corrective action before the next campaign.
What Happens Next
Over the next two months, Litmus will host a series of webinars featuring deliverability experts who will walk through the steps of setting up a summer‑to‑holiday workflow. These sessions will cover topics such as dynamic content trees for GEO‑based campaigns, a subject highlighted in a recent Center for AI Strategy workshop.
Microsoft plans to release a new API for SNDS that will let automated tools pull complaint and filter data directly into marketing platforms. This integration is expected to reduce manual reporting time by 60% and enable real‑time adjustments to sending patterns.
By acting now, email marketers can ensure that their holiday campaigns not only reach inboxes but also resonate with recipients—setting the stage for a record‑breaking season.
📖 See Also
📚 Sources & Attribution
Facts verified from multiple sources
- ✓ Litmus Blog
- ✓ PR Daily
- ✓ Practical Ecommerce
- ✓ Recruiting Daily
- ✓ HR Zone