Why are my first emails limited?
When your site first starts sending campaigns, bernard lets it email only a few people a day. For the first 48 hours, your site can email at most 200 people in any 24 hours. After that the limit lifts. This is called a warm-up. It is bernard’s own rule, not something the email provider makes us do, and there is nothing for you to set.
The prompt
“Tell me whether [my site] is still in its email warm-up, how many people I can email today, and when the limit lifts. Do not send anything.”
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Why bernard does it
Inbox providers such as Gmail watch how people react to a sender’s email. When too many people mark it as spam, the sender is marked down, and its later emails can land in the spam folder instead of the inbox.
A list that has not heard from you in a while is where this goes wrong. Some of the addresses have died. Some people have forgotten they signed up. Sending to all of them at once on day one is the fastest way to hurt the address you will send from for years.
There is a second reason. Every bernard site sends through the same email service. If one site starts badly, the service sees it as a problem with bernard, and every other site could feel it. So bernard asks every new site to start small, and watches what happens before it lets the site send more.
What you will see
Before sending opens. The Sending health card on the Email campaigns tab says bernard has not opened campaign sending for your site yet. You can write, save and preview campaigns while you wait.
During the warm-up. The card shows the warm-up limit and how many people your site has emailed in the last 24 hours. A campaign that fits goes out as normal.
When the day is full. The card turns to Worth watching and says you have reached today’s limit while bernard warms up your new sending address. This is not a pause and nothing is wrong. Save the campaign and send it when the warm-up ends. If you send a campaign that is bigger than the room left, the people who fit receive it and the rest wait. The Email campaigns tab shows where the campaign stands. Automatic emails that do not fit wait their turn rather than being lost.
If somebody marks an email as spam. During the warm-up, a single spam complaint stops campaign sending for your site. Sending reopens by itself once 24 hours pass with no new complaint. Nobody has to review it, and the card says so in plain words. After the warm-up, one complaint on its own does not stop you: bernard stops sending only if the share of people complaining, or the share of addresses that fail, goes above a safe level, and that stop lifts by itself in the same way. Is my email sending healthy? explains those two numbers.
A stop for a complaint does not restart the warm-up: the clock keeps running from the day your sending first opened. Some pauses are different. If bernard’s team pauses a site, or a complaint comes from a list you brought over from another email tool, sending waits for a person to reopen it, and once they do, the warm-up starts again from the beginning.
What you can do
- Nothing, if your list is small. A list that fits inside the daily limit is not held back.
- Send to your most interested people first. Your recent buyers, your current students and the people who signed up lately are the ones most likely to open your email. A good first day is the best start your address can have.
- Plan a big campaign for after the warm-up. If your audience is larger than the daily limit, write the campaign now and send it when the first couple of days have passed.
- Tidy the list before you start. People who have not bought, enrolled or filled in a form for a long time are the likeliest to complain. How do I tidy my mailing list once a year? shows how bernard finds them.
If you brought your list over from another email tool, a separate rule caps the first campaign to those people. When can I email the people I just imported? explains that one, and Why can’t I send my email campaign? lists every check that can stand between a draft and a send.
Questions people ask
- How many people can I email during the warm-up?
- For the first 48 hours after campaign sending opens for your site, at most 200 people in any 24 hours. Campaigns and automatic marketing emails share that number. After those hours the warm-up limit is gone. Your monthly allowance still applies, and so do the limits on complaints and failed addresses.
- Is this a rule from the email provider?
- No. It is bernard’s own rule. The service bernard sends through sets limits on bernard as a whole, not on your site. Bernard adds the warm-up because every bernard site sends through the same service, so one site’s bad start would be everybody’s problem.
- Do receipts and sign-in links count?
- No. Emails that go to one person because of something they did, such as a receipt, a sign-in link or a course welcome, are not part of the warm-up and are never held by it.
- My list has fewer people than the limit. Does any of this affect me?
- Hardly at all. If your whole audience fits inside the daily limit, you can send your campaign on day one as normal. The one rule that still applies is the stricter spam rule in the first two days, described on this page.
- Does the warm-up change what I approve?
- No. You still approve each campaign: the exact email, its version and how many people it goes to. The warm-up only decides how many of them today has room for. If the campaign is bigger than the room left, the rest wait rather than being dropped, so it is simplest to send a big campaign after the warm-up.
- Can I ask for the warm-up to be skipped?
- No. The warm-up is the same for every site, so it cannot be switched off for one. It protects your own sending address first, and it lasts only 48 hours.