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Limit your marketing pressure with sending cadence (Frequency cap and Email overload prevention)

❗️ Important
The frequency cap and email overload prevention features are only available for Enterprise plan users. Upgrade your plan to enable it.

Reducing the number of emails you send to your contacts can help your messages stand out and limit the marketing pressure on your contacts. 

What is marketing pressure?

Imagine you activated several automations with different Send an email steps or have scheduled several email campaigns for the same or similar audience. Your contacts may receive many emails from your brand!

Look at what their inbox could look like without optimizing your sending cadence 👉.

This could lead to customer fatigue, unsubscribing, marking emails as spam, or damaging your reputation.

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➡️ Enable sending cadence to avoid the above situation and skip the emails of your choice if your customer has already received an email from you a few hours or days before 🤩.

🤔 What is the difference between frequency cap and email overload prevention?

The frequency cap and email overload prevention options serve the same purpose: they allow you to skip emails sent through Campaigns or Automations during a chosen period if your contacts have already reached the defined limit.

However, the option you need to activate depends on the version of your automation editor and the type of email you want to skip: 

❗️ Important
The sending cadence options are global. It considers any emails sent with your account (Automation and Campaigns). The emails for which you enable the email overload prevention rule will be skipped if your customers have already received an email from you through an automation, or email campaign. 

Either way, you are reducing the number of emails that your contacts may receive 🤩. By choosing quality over quantity, you are increasing your emails' impact, but also your customers' engagement 🚀.

☂️ Frequency cap (Email campaigns and new automation editor) 

❗️ Important
With the frequency cap, emails sent via Campaigns are automatically skipped if recipients have already received too many emails from you during the set period. You can ignore the frequency cap for some campaigns if you want them to be sent to all your recipients despite the cap. However, marketing emails sent via Automations are not skipped automatically. You need to apply the cap to these emails individually when creating automations.

✅ Part 1: Enable frequency cap

  1. Click Campaigns > Settings > Sending cadence.
  2. Toggle the Activate frequency cap option. 
  3. Choose the maximum number of emails your recipients can receive during the defined period. 
  4. Choose the frequency at which the cap is to be applied.
    sending-cadence_frequency-cap_EN-US.jpeg
    ➡️  For example
    Each marketing email for which the frequency cap is activated and sent via Automations or Campaigns will count toward the cap. If you choose a maximum number of 5 emails per recipient weekly, each of your contacts can receive a maximum of 5 of these marketing emails per week.
  5. Click Save frequency cap. 

Congratulations! 🎉 By default, all your marketing emails sent via Campaigns are included in the frequency cap and will be automatically skipped. You can manually ignore the frequency cap for some campaigns if you want them to be sent to all your recipients despite the cap.  

However, if you want to apply the frequency cap to your marketing emails sent via Automations, you need to apply it manually for each of them. 

🎯 Part 2: Choose which marketing emails you want to skip in automation

Now that you have activated the frequency cap, you need to choose which marketing emails you want to include in this cap from Automations:

  1. Go to Automations.
  2. Create or edit an automation with the new automation editor that includes the sending of a marketing email. 
  3. Create or edit a Send an email action. 
  4. From the left sidebar, scroll down to the Additional settings. 
    automations_apply-frequency-cap_EN-US.jpeg
  5. Click the arrow next to Frequency cap to expand it.
  6. Activate the Include email in the frequency cap option. 
  7. Continue configuring or editing your Send an email action. 
  8. Click Save. 

Congratulations! 🎉 This marketing email is now included in your frequency cap. It will be skipped if your contact has already received the maximum amount of emails you've set in your cap. 

👮‍♀️ Email overload prevention (Classic automation editor)

💡 Good to know
With email overload prevention, marketing emails sent through automation are not skipped automatically. You need to define them individually when creating automations. 

✅ Step 1: Enable email overload prevention  

You first need to enable the email overload prevention rule for your account. To do so: 

  1. Click the Campaigns > Settings > Sending cadence.
  2. Click Sending cadence.
  3. Toggle the Activate email overload prevention option. 
  4. Define the period during which email overload prevention is to apply to skip sending marketing emails to your contacts. You can set a maximum period of 720 hours or 30 days.
    sending-cadence_email-overload-prevention_EN-US.jpeg
    💡 Good to know
    Brevo will continue to send transactional emails during this period. Only marketing emails sent through Automations can be skipped. 
  5. Click Save period. 

Now that you have enabled the email overload prevention rule, you must choose which emails you want to skip in your automations ⬇️.

🎯 Step 2: Choose which marketing emails you want to skip in automation

Now that you have enabled the email overload prevention rule, you have to choose which emails you want to skip in each automation. To do so: 

  1. Go to Automations.
  2. Create an automation or edit an existing one.
    edit-create-workflow-automation_EN-US.png
  3. Add a Send an email step or edit an existing one. This will be the email that will be skipped if your contacts.
    edit-create-automation_EN-US.png
  4. In the Send an email action settings, select the email template you want to use for this action, and check the extra actions you need. 
  5. Toggle the Skip sending this email to reduce the email overload of your contacts option.
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  6. Optional: Edit the skipping period in your sending settings. 
  7. Click Ok to validate this action.

Congratulations! Your email will now be skipped if your contact already received one of your emails during the timestamp you defined. You can repeat the steps above for each email you want to skip. 

❓ FAQs 

Frequency cap

Can I pause or deactivate the frequency cap?

There may be times when you need to send an important promotional message to all your recipients. To do so, you can pause or deactivate the sending cadence when needed to allow your message to reach all the recipients you've targeted.

To deactivate the frequency cap for your email campaigns or automations:

Email campaigns Automations
  1. Access the email campaign for which you want to deactivate the frequency cap.
  2. From the Recipients step, uncheck the Include this email in the frequency cap option.
  3. Continue editing your Recipients step and click Save. 
    frequency-cap_deactivate-frequency-cap_EN-US.jpeg

You have successfully excluded this email campaign from your frequency cap 🎉. It will be sent to all the recipients you selected, even if they already received marketing emails from you during the frequency cap period.

What happens during the sending of my email campaign (Send now, later or Send at best time)?

Campaigns scheduled after the activation of the frequency cap with Send now or Later will be included in the cap.

For email campaigns sent with the Send at best time option, the individual best sending time per contact is not taken into consideration for the frequency cap. The frequency cap is calculated from the first email campaign that goes out to the first contact's best sending time. All contacts that are to be skipped at that moment, will be skipped. 

➡️  For example

Your frequency cap is set to 1 email per day (24h).
Contact A's best sending time is 11 a.m., and Contact B's best sending time is 9 a.m. 

Contact A already received an email from you on August, 5th at 9 a.m. 

You send an email campaign to Contact A and Contact B on August, 6th. 

The frequency cap will be calculated from the first email that goes out at 9 a.m., according to Contact B's best sending time.

Contact B will receive the email since they did not receive a marketing email from you in the last 24h. However, Contact A will not receive the email as the frequency cap has been calculated from 9 a.m., and therefore 24h have not yet passed since the last marketing email they received from you. 

What about emails sent in batches or to warm up IP?

The first batches of the campaign will be sent to contacts that are not affected by the frequency cap. Contacts that should be skipped due to the frequency cap will be saved for the final batches. After these contacts have received the campaign, we will review them again to determine if the frequency cap still applies. If it does, those contacts will be skipped; if not, they will be sent in the final batches.

Where can I check how many contacts were skipped with the frequency cap?

To find out how contacts were skipped during the sending of your email campaign or automation while the frequency cap was activated:

Campaigns Automations
  1. Export your email campaign report in CSV format. 
  2. Check the Skip reason column. Automations containing contacts that have been skipped because of the frequency cap have the following log message: Contact was skipped due to frequency cap.
  3. Check the Skip date column to know when this contact was skipped. 
    frequency-cap_skip-email-report_EN-US.jpeg

Email overload prevention

Can I pause or deactivate email overload prevention?

If you want to pause or deactivate the email overload prevention, go to the Email overload prevention rule section and set the period during which you want to skip the emails to 0. This will allow you to keep the feature toggled on in your automations while pausing the feature. No emails will be skipped.

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❗️ Important
If you toggle off the email overload prevention rule, all the emails for which you toggled the email overload prevention rule in your automations will automatically be toggled off, making you lose their email overload configuration. We highly recommend pausing this feature by setting the skipping period to 0. 

🕰️ What is the difference between Delay time and sending cadence in automation? 

The Delay time feature can be enabled in the general settings of Campaigns and concerns only emails sent via Campaigns. The Delay time feature doesn’t skip the sending but adds a delay between one sending and another.

The sending cadence feature can be enabled at your account level and concerns the skipping of emails sent via Automations and Campaigns. The sending cadence feature skips the sending of emails sent via Automations or Campaigns for contacts who already received any marketing email from your account in a defined timestamp.

❗️ Important
Both features work independently and cannot be used in parallel. The sending cadence feature focuses on every email sent (Automation, Campaigns, API), while the Delay time feature focuses on emails sent through campaigns only.  

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo expert partner.

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