Sending terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy campaigns

At one time or another, most businesses will need to send either terms of service (TOS) updates, or communicate a change in their privacy policy.

These campaigns sometimes present a deliverability challenge because of the high sending volumes involved, as well as including contacts who are unengaged or who unsubscribed. 

With careful planning you can minimise the potential impact to your future performance. 

Best practices for TOS and privacy campaign content

Check with your legal team

Always get advice from your legal team regarding which contacts need to be contacted.

Clear subject lines

Make sure your campaign's subject line is as clear as possible, so that your contacts understand what the email is.

Consider other channels

Think about whether email is the most suitable channel for this communication, or if you could use a different method like SMS. 

Clear content

You should explicitly state why your contacts are receiving the campaign.

Contacts who don't understand why they are receiving an email are more likely to mark it as spam. 

Include everything in the email

Make sure you're including all of the important information about any significant changes in the email itself, or provide a summary so that your contacts don't have to click through to understand the changes.

Stick to the point

Don't include any marketing content in this email.

Maintain list hygiene

Consider performing a contact cleanse of your least engaged and opted-out contacts to remove any invalid email addresses.

See: List hygiene

Structuring your sends

Scheduling your campaign

Don't schedule TOS or privacy policy campaigns to send at the same time as your usual marketing content.

Instead, schedule your campaigns to start generating before or after your other broadcast campaigns.

Monitor your volumes

Don't exceed 2x your normal send volumes in a single batch, as this can lead to blocks and deferrals for spammy behaviour.

Instead, ramp-up your send volumes as you would ahead of a sale. 

See: Ramping up send volumes

Batch send your campaign

Ideally, send the campaign in batches over several days.

Start by sending to your engaged and opted-in contacts first, then work through less engaged contacts, and lastly send to your contacts who are opted-out.

Monitoring campaign performance

Once you start sending your campaign, keep a close eye on your campaign metrics. 

Key metrics to pay attention to are:

Open rates

Your open rates will likely be lower than for your regular marketing campaigns, especially if you're including less engaged contacts, but very low open rates can indicate that your campaign is being filtered into the spam folder. 

Bounces

A high number of hard bounces indicates that your contact list contains poor quality data.

You should investigate where this data was collected and take steps to prevent poor data collection in future.

A high number of soft bounces typically indicates contacts will full mailboxes, but it could also indicate a mailbox provider choosing to block or delay acceptance of the campaign.

See: Bounce management in Ometria

Spam complaints

A high number of spam complaints shows that the campaign was not well received. High spam complaints can damage your sending reputation.