Bronto Blog

To “throttle” a message means to slow its delivery speed and thus spread your message out over time. Our next update will include a feature that allows you to define the delivery rate for your message - “as soon as possible”, “at least 2 hours”, “at least 4 hours”, etc. For example, instead of sending your mailing to 100K contacts as quickly as possible, you may choose to spread the delivery over a period of 4 hours.

Throttling - much like Heinz Ketchup - proves that the best things come to those who wait. Throttling your mail will offer three distinct benefits:

• Improves delivery. Quite simply, the slower you send your message, the less likely that you’ll be subjected to frequency filters or blocks. Many large ISPs and corporations are sensitive to mail density and tune their filtering systems to attribute a higher spam score to messages that come in large bunches. Thus, a throttled message - one that comes in spread over a longer period of time - is less likely to be impacted by these filtering methods.
• Lessens the impact of complaints. Similarly, many ISPs track a sender’s reputation based on the number of unsolicited email complaints that they generate over a certain period of time. Again, throttling your mail can help mitigate the impact of this issue. For example, 20 unsolicited email complaints received over 8 hours, though certainly undesirable, will be a softer blow to your sending reputation than the same 20 complaints received over 15 minutes.
• Mitigates web traffic spikes. Spreading your delivery over time also spreads the resulting web traffic over time, thus mitigating traffic spikes and ensuring optimal website performance for your potential buyers, donors, registrants, readers, etc.

Our Client Service team (also known as The Sherpas) would be glad to answer your questions and guide you in the application of throttling. In the meantime, I suggest that you watch the video of a young Matt Le Blanc’s illustration of how the “throttling” concept extends beyond email marketing to also bring culinary and romantic good fortune.

DJ Waldow
Account Manager at Bronto