First Day of Listmas: Slow Delivery

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 long, but they become especially pointed and painful during the time 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 which can be causing mail to not 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’re going to call this the “12 Days of Listmas.”

But, allow this first post to serve as a reminder that slow delivery rates are a real thing and that email is not an instant messaging format. Email is, by design, a store-and-forward protocol. That means that 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, then the message 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 other messages can take hours or days to get to their recipient.

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