Reducing the number of emails you send to your contacts can help your messages stand out. This is why we released email overload prevention that allows you to skip emails sent through your automation workflows during a chosen period if your contacts have ever received another marketing email from you. 

➡️ For example

Imagine you created different automation workflows, all containing multiple Send an email steps. If your customer performs different actions that lead to the sending of an email from your brand, they will receive all the automatic emails triggered by your workflows. The email inbox on the right is what your customer's inbox could look like without the email overload prevention rule 👉. This could be perceived as harassment from your brand and lead to customer fatigue. It could even cause them to unsubscribe from your marketing emails or mark them as spam and give a bad reputation to your brand.

➡️ Enable the email overload prevention rule to avoid the above situation and skip chosen emails if your customer has already received an email from you a few hours or days before 🤩.

✅ Part 1: Enable Email overload prevention  

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

1. Click your name on the top-right side of the screen.
2. Access Senders & IP.
   
3. Click the Email overload prevention rule section.
   
4. Toggle the Reduce the email overload of your contacts option. Brevo will continue to send transactional emails during this period. Only marketing emails sent through automation workflows can be skipped. 
   
   💡 Good to know

   Enabling email overload prevention doesn't automatically skip your marketing emails. We decided to give you the liberty to choose which emails you want to skip, so you must define them one by one when creating your workflows. 
5. Define the period during which you want to skip sending marketing emails to your contacts. By default, the defined period is 12 hours, but you can change it to a max of 720 hours or 30 days.
   ❗️ Important

   The email overload prevention rule is global. It considers any emails sent with your account (Automation, Campaigns, API). 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 a workflow, email campaign, or API. 
   
   
   💡 Good to know

   Brevo will continue to send transactional emails during this period. Only marketing emails sent through automation workflows can be skipped. 
6. Click Validate the period. 

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

🫵 Part 2: Choose which emails you want to skip 

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

1. Go to Automation.
2. Create a workflow or edit an existing one.
   
3. Add a Send an email step or edit an existing one. Ensure this step is well This will be the email that will be skipped if your contacts 
   
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.
   
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. 

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

❓Can I pause or disable the email overload prevention rule? 

If you want to pause or disable 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 workflows while pausing the feature. No emails will be skipped.

❓What is the difference between the Delay time and Email overload prevention features? 

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

The email overload prevention feature can be enabled at your account level, and concerns the skipping of emails sent through automation workflow. The email overload prevention feature skips the sending of emails sent through automation workflow for contacts who already received any marketing email from your accont in a defined timestamp.

Both features work independently. The email overload prevention 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.