Email Throttling: What does it mean for Email Marketing?

The deliverability of your emails is one of the most crucial elements of a successful email marketing strategy. After all, if your emails don’t even reach your recipients’ inboxes, you won’t get the actions you need from them. 

This blog post explains what email throttling is and how it can be avoided. 

Email Throttling: What is it?

Throttling in email occurs when an Internet Service Provider (ISP) limits the amount of email that can be received from a sender during a given timeframe. 

During throttling, your email service provider (ESP) sends emails to many recipients, but only for a few seconds. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) blocks subsequent delivery attempts, creating a “soft bounce.”

Your email may be temporarily unavailable and may appear with an error message, such as:

• Right now, the user is receiving too many emails; please try again later.
• Mail not delivered.
• The mailbox of the user exceeds the quota.
• Your daily sending limit has been reached

Despite the interchangeability of terms, throttling emails and deferrals differ slightly. Throttling prevents the ISP from delivering your emails altogether. A deferral attempt, on the other hand, involves the ISP temporarily rejecting the delivery attempt and asking that it be sent later.  

Why do emails get throttled?

During a specific period, ISPs usually limit the amount of mail they can receive from a sender. Your ISP rejects your delivery request if you cross the threshold, increasing bouncebacks. 

The limits differ depending on several factors such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, abuse complaints, bounce rates, subscriber engagement, and spam hit rates. Until an IP’s reputation is established, an ISP may limit the amount of traffic it sends each day to a lower threshold. 

ISPs might reject a delivery attempt for a variety of reasons, including: 

• Your server thinks you’re sending spam because you are sending emails so fast. 
• The addresses in your email database are inactive or nonexistent because you have not cleaned your list. 
• There have been complaints about your emails being marked as spam or people marking them as abusive. If this situation arises, the ISP may temporarily reject delivery attempts to test how other recipients react.
• There are too many emails coming from a new IP that has yet to establish a good reputation. 
• Inboxes are overflowing.
• ISPs don’t have open ports for more email traffic.

What is the impact of email throttling on email marketing?

Your email marketing efforts can be negatively affected by email throttling in numerous ways. 

A high email throttling rate can damage your sender’s reputation and negatively affect your email deliverability, resulting in an unsuccessful email marketing campaign. 

Compared with other digital channels, email marketing provides the highest return on investment. Your investment in email marketing returns $42 for every dollar spent. 85% of marketers consider email to be the most effective tactic for acquiring customers. 

In this day and age when marketers are competing to earn a place in subscribers’ inboxes, it’s important to protect your domain’s and IP’s reputation. People send more than 306 billion emails every day, so losing your reputation score would result in a loss of competitive advantage.   

When sending emails with a low sender score, ISPs may divert them to spam folders or fail to deliver them together. You need high subscriber engagement to make email marketing successful. You’ll have low click-through rates, open rates, and viewing times if your email is redirected to the spam folder.   

Preventing Email Throttling

For a strong sender score, it is imperative to take remedial measures to avoid future email throttling. You can do a few things to avoid throttling:

Start warming up your new IP address

Building trust takes time, and building a solid sender reputation is no different. You shouldn’t send too many emails too quickly if you’re using a new IP or domain.  

You need to warm up your IP. In other words, send a few emails over some time. In the first 30 days, it is better to take it slow and steady to establish your reputation and identity. Developing good emailing habits will allow you to gradually increase the volume as your campaigns require.

Segmenting Your Email Traffic

You may want to separate your marketing and transactional email traffic in line with warming up your IP. Thus, each list can be built and maintained independently. 

Cleaning Your Email Databases

To keep your database clean, remove all inactive and non-existing emails as well as unsubscribes from your list. When your email database is clean and active, bouncebacks are reduced, which means better email delivery. 

Building a good reputation is important

Email throttling is a barrier to effective email marketing and a hindrance to successful deliverability. Your emails should land in the inbox (not the spam folder) if you want to stay ahead of any throttling issues. Your marketing campaigns will soar as a result of increased email deliverability. 

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