ice on the tree branch

First Day of Listmas: Slow Delivery

7 December 2017

On the first day of Listmas, my data showed to me something’s causing slow delivery…

Slow delivery rates are a real factor all year, but they become especially pointed and painful between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They happen for all kinds of reasons. So, each weekday until the Friday before Christmas, we’re going to look at things that can be causing mail not to get delivered. Of course, the list of things that can cause delivery rates to slow down or sending to fail altogether is longer than 12, but in honor of the season, we’ll call this the “12 Days of Listmas.”

But, allow this first post to serve as a reminder that slow delivery rates are real and that email is not an instant messaging format. Email is, by design, a store-and-forward protocol. That means the message is stored until the next point in the chain accepts the message. If that next link isn’t ready or willing to accept the message, it will stay where it is until either the message can get passed along or it times out. That’s why some messages take 5 seconds to arrive, and others take hours or days to reach their recipient.

Read moreThe Spock Trap

What does this mean for marketers? It means that your plans should include delays as a reality. Planning to send messages that must be “delivered within 5 minutes and used in the next hour” will inevitably lead to heartache as messages arrive late.

Mickey Chandler
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