Sending policy: how to limit the number of messages per one subscriber
How many emails are you going to get over a day from one company before you hit the unsubscribe button? Everyone has their own patience limit, but it is likely that after the fifth identical email, with a couple of SMS messages in addition to it, anyone will unsubscribe. And even if they don't, an innocent push notification would be the last straw. The case could not just be over with an unsubscription, but also with a spam complaint.
Of course, no marketing expert would be intentionally flooding a client's mailbox with junk emails. There's always a well-defined mailing plan based on marketing research.
However, sometimes there are situations when one subscriber, for whatever reason, receives too many messages within a short period of time. For example, this can happen if the marketing department pre-segments the target audience. There is a risk that the segments cross each other and several identical emails get sent to the same user. A sending policy can help keep that from happening.
A sending policy is a set of rules that limits the number of messages sent to one receiver in a certain period of time.
Sending policies are set up by the master administrator. They can be applied to the entire account, to a certain resource, or to a particular campaign.
How to set up the sending policy
Step 1: Open Settings → Sending Policies. Click the “Create” button on the toolbar at the top. In the general settings, specify the sending policy name. You can also optionally briefly describe its purpose:
Step 2: Specify the policy limits. Select the type of restriction, set the maximum number of messages and the time period. For example, maximum 2 messages per day.
The following types of limits are available:
Limit sending to one recipient — any contacts and any subscriptions of the same profile are taken into account.
Limit sending to one recipient via one resource — subscriptions of one profile to a particular resource are taken into account.
Limit sending to one recipient via one channel — all the profile's subscriptions to all resources via one communication channel (email, sms, push) are taken into account.
Limit sending to one contact (email address, phone number) — all subscriptions containing the same contact are taken into account. Note that subscriptions can belong to different profiles.
A policy where no restriction type is selected is unlimited. This policy comes in handy if you need to set a global limit within an account, but at the same time allow the resource or a campaign to provide unrestricted sending. Create an unlimited policy and assign it to the resource or the campaign to redefine the global settings.
Step 3. Select access groups, if required. You can set the sending policy only for resources and campaigns that belong to these groups.
Step 4. Save the sending policy.
How to apply the sending policy
The sending policy can be applied:
- globally for the entire account
- within one resource
- for one particular campaign
The campaign policy gets the highest priority, while the whole account's sending policy gets the lowest one. In other words, the resource policy redefines the account policy, and the campaign policy redefines the resource policy.
Within the entire account
The sending policy is applied to all campaigns in the account. To set a global policy for an account, go to Settings in the main menu → Account Settings and select a policy from this drop-down menu:
Within one resource
The sending policy is applied to all the campaigns that you run within a particular resource. The policy is set when you create a new resource or edit an already created one in the main settings:
Within one campaign
The policy is only applied to a certain campaign. You can set the policy while creating a new campaign in the “Limitations” box.
Conclusions
The sending policy controls the frequency of sending messages to the same profile. The purpose of the policy is to protect the customer from the redundant messages. The sending policy can be applied globally to an entire account, within a single resource, or for one particular campaign.