Unwrap Your Potential: A Guide to Holiday Email Deliverability

Kristen Wyatt on October 20, 2025

The holiday season is a marathon for inboxes. As a marketer, you’re competing with travel plans, family newsletters, other brand mail, and a general sense of overload. In this environment, getting your email delivered is the first and most important step. If your message lands in the spam folder or gets ignored, even the most dazzling discount is worthless.

This year, shift your focus from just sending emails to confirming that they are wanted. Let’s explore how to navigate the holiday rush while keeping your sender reputation sparkling.

The Do’s: Your Ride to the Primary Inbox

Warm Up Your Audience, Don’t Shock Them
Imagine not hearing from a friend for months, only for them to show up at your door asking for a favor. Your subscribers feel the same way. A sudden surge in email volume after a period of silence is a major red flag for internet service providers (ISPs) like Gmail and Outlook. Begin increasing your sending frequency gradually several weeks before high-volume sending days like Black Friday. Send a re-engagement campaign to your dormant subscribers to separate the truly interested from those who may have disengaged. This list hygiene helps to provide a clear path for your most important messages.

Personalization is Your Best Friend
“Happy Holidays!” is fine, but “Ready for your cozy Christmas, Sarah?” can be magical. Go beyond using a first name in the subject line. Leverage past purchase data to segment your list. Send personalized recommendations, remind customers of the items they left in their cart, or wish them a happy anniversary of their first purchase. This level of personalization signals to both the subscriber and the ISP that your email is anticipated and relevant, not a mass blast sent to millions.

Make Every Subject Line a Gift
Your subject line is your first impression. During the holidays, avoid the desperate, spammy language that floods inboxes like the excessive use of dollar signs, all-caps, and words like “FREE,” “URGENT,” or “Act Now!” can trigger spam filters. Instead, focus on creating genuine curiosity or offer a clear benefit. Think “Your Exclusive Early Access is Inside” or “A Cozy Gift Guide, Curated for You.” A truthful and compelling subject line earns the open and builds trust.

Embrace the Unsubscribe and Make It Easy
It may feel counterintuitive, but a clean list is a healthy list. When an inbox is flooded, the last thing you want is a subscriber hitting the “report spam” button because they can’t easily find the unsubscribe link. Make the unsubscribe process clear and simple. This protects your sender reputation far more than forcing your mail on someone who no longer wants them. Remember, it’s better to have a smaller, engaged audience than a large, unresponsive one that hurts your ability to reach everyone else.

The Don’ts: Avoiding the Spam Folder Wreck

Don’t Ignore the Silent Killer: List Hygiene
We mentioned list cleaning earlier. But it’s so important, it bears repeating. Sending to old, invalid, or unengaged email addresses is one of the fastest ways to damage your sender reputation. High bounce rates and low engagement lets ISPs know that recipients don’t want your mail, which can lead to your future emails being blocked or filtered for everyone, even your most loyal supporters.

Don’t Surprise Your Subscribers with a New “From” Name
Consistency is major when looking at customer recognition and trust. If your subscribers are used to seeing emails from “The Nordic Nook,” suddenly changing your “From” name to “Holiday Deals Central” will cause confusion and increase the likelihood of them marking your email as spam. Stick with your recognizable brand name so people know immediately that the email is from a sender they once trusted.

Don’t Forget the Mobile Ride
A huge percentage of holiday emails are opened on smartphones. Sending an email with a clunky, non-responsive design that requires pinching and zooming is a surefire way to get deleted. Make sure your templates are mobile-friendly, with large text, clear call-to-action buttons, and fast-loading images. A poor mobile experience leads to low engagement, which inbox providers interpret as a lack of interest in your content.

Don’t “Overstuff the Stocking”
While it’s tempting to email your list every day with a new promotion, this can lead to list fatigue. Subscribers may start ignoring you or, worse, unsubscribing. Focus on quality over quantity. Plan a strategic cadence for your most important sends like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and a last-chance offer, then give each email room to breathe and perform.

Your Deliverability Checklist for a Successful Season

By focusing on these principles, you’re not just avoiding pitfalls; you’re building a foundation of trust with your subscribers and inbox providers. To summarize, remember to gradually increase your sending frequency, personalize your content, write authentic subject lines, and maintain impeccable list hygiene. Avoid sudden changes in your sender identity, confirm that your emails are presentable on mobile, and resist the urge to over-send.

This holiday season, let your campaigns be the ones that are eagerly awaited and joyfully opened. Happy Sending!

B2B vs. B2C: Understanding Key Differences

Kristen Wyatt on April 22, 2025

The best marketing efforts hinge on deliverability, which is the ability of an email to reach a recipient’s inbox successfully rather than being blocked or marked as spam. While the fundamental principles of email marketing apply across the board, the approach to deliverability varies between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) campaigns. Understanding these differences is important for marketers aiming to optimize engagement, maintain sender reputation, and achieve measurable results.

B2B communications typically target professionals who engage with email in a structured and intentional way. Since these recipients evaluate purchases that could involve long sales cycles, their engagement tends to be more measured. Open rates in B2B environments are often higher because work-related emails are prioritized. But responses may take time! Research indicates that mid-morning or early afternoon on weekdays are optimal sending times.

On the other hand, B2C emails cater to individual consumers whose purchasing decisions are more likely to be impulsive and/or emotionally driven. The competition for attention is intense as consumers are constantly overwhelmed with promotional content. Successful B2C emails leverage urgency, personalization, and compelling visuals to prompt immediate action. Unlike B2B, where weekdays dominate, B2C campaigns are more likely to see higher engagement during evenings, weekends, or holidays.

The tone and content of B2B/B2C emails must support their respective audiences. When you are emailing business professionals, imagine you are preparing an executive briefing. These readers are assessing whether you understand their challenges as they assess your message. That is why the most successful B2B emails read like well-prepared insights rather than advertisements. We have seen clients transform mediocre campaigns just by shifting from generic product benefits to specific results.

On the consumer side, you are fighting for attention against baby photos, dinner plans, and viral memes, along with competitors. For B2C, the emails that cut through the noise feel like they are coming from a knowledgeable friend, rather than a faceless corporation.

Maintaining a clean email list is relevant for B2B and B2C campaigns, but the challenges differ. In B2B marketing, spam filters are notoriously strict. A single spam complaint or high bounce rate can severely damage sender credibility, especially since most B2B emails are analyzed through enterprise-level security systems. To reduce these risks, marketers should implement double opt-in processes, segment lists by industry or job function, and gradually warm up new domains to avoid triggering spam filters.

B2C lists face issues related to scale and unpredictability. Consumers frequently update email addresses, abandon old accounts, or use disposable emails for sign-ups. High bounce rates and inactive subscribers can harm deliverability. This makes having a real-time email validation tool beneficial. B2C marketers should also monitor spam complaints vigilantly since ISPs like Gmail and Yahoo aggressively filter promotional content.

Campaign successes are measured differently in B2B and B2C environments. B2B typically has higher open rates due to its professional relevance. But click-through rates (CTRs) may be lower due to recipients often requiring multiple touchpoints before converting. Spam complaints are especially damaging in B2B due to corporate filters imposing harsh penalties on senders with poor reputations.

B2C campaigns often see fluctuating open rates, but higher CTRs when promotions resonate with audiences. But the large volume of marketing emails consumers receive means that even minor missteps, like misleading subject lines or excessive frequency, can lead to increased unsubscribe rates and spam flags.

At the end of the day, email marketing succeeds or fails based on one simple question: Does this feel like a message the recipient actually wants to receive? B2B marketers must focus on building trust through professional, value-driven messaging while maintaining list hygiene. B2C marketers should prioritize engagement, mobile optimization, and rapid adaptability to shifting consumer trends. By customizing strategies to the unique demands of B2B and B2C email marketing, businesses can maximize deliverability, enhance engagement, and achieve sustainable growth.