Service message - strategy help

[JGeary]

I am currently preparing to send an important service message to our entire database, including both opted-in and opted-out users.

I plan to send this email via HubSpot as a "transactional" email.

My primary concern is maintaining a good sender reputation and avoiding being flagged as spam by Email Service Providers. This concern stems from two main factors related to this unusual service message campaign:

1. Low open rates: Service messages typically have very low open rates, which can negatively impact sender reputation.

2. High volume: We are sending an unusually high volume of these service messages, which is forcing us to scale back the frequency of our regular marketing emails.

Is there an alternative strategy for deploying this service message that mitigates the risk of damaging our sender reputation and allowing us to continue to send our normal marketing sends? 

For background, we send emails from our own domain name, and its health/reputation is currently good.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JGeary,

Despite this being a service message, I would try to design it in a way that increases open rates, potentially encourages recipients to find details under a link or CTA and maybe even to reply - in other words, provide options for recipients to generate positive signals. Service emails can be plain test but they don't have to be.

Secondly, I would start by sending the email to a small sample of the entire list and potentially even a/b test variants to see which version gets the highest engagement.

It's likely not going to get the engagement rates of a well crafted content piece but that doesn't mean that you can't optimise and test 🙂

Best regards