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- Thu 9/10 | Ed 412 | Your Q4 sending has 10 places to break
Thu 9/10 | Ed 412 | Your Q4 sending has 10 places to break
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There’s a flow in your account nobody has opened since March, and in 11 weeks it will carry more traffic than it has all year.
Email gets a look eventually. The text messages don’t get one at all, because nobody owns them and they only speak up when the invoice lands.
Today we're diving into what to actually check on both channels before the volume arrives, and the 3 that only apply to text. 👇
Also inside:
→ Half the room is founders, and the vendors are capped at one in four
→ A protein ice cream bar that cleared its opening stock in 8 hours
→ Two more small brands shipping the thing their customers kept asking for
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We kick off with breakfast, morning keynotes, a live podcast, fully catered lunch and close out the day with afternoon workshops and of course a sunset cocktail hour on the water.
Not to mention we'll be giving away over $200k in prizes from vacations to MacBooks. Seriously. 👀
Grab your ticket and hang out with us IRL!
An email audit in January is a post-mortem. The quarter is banked, the findings are 8 weeks late, and the only thing left to do is write them down for next year.
But 11 weeks out is different.
Everything below is still fixable, and most of it takes an afternoon and a strong cup of coffee. We’ve run this list on our own program more than once, and it has never once come back clean.
So here are 10 checks, ordered by what costs the most when it’s wrong. Take them one at a time and be kind to yourself about what you find. 6 are email, 3 are SMS, and the last one is the reason you did any of it.
1. Authenticate the domain you are about to lean on
SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the 3 records that tell Gmail an email really came from you rather than somebody wearing your name. 3 acronyms nobody enjoys, but it takes 1 afternoon and that’s the difference between landing and not.
How:
- Drop your sending domain into MXToolbox, then paste whatever it says into ChatGPT and ask what to fix.
2. Pull your complaint rate on your worst campaign, not your average
Averages are where bad sends go to hide. You want the single highest-complaint campaign of the last quarter, measured against the 0.3% line where mailbox providers start slowing you down.
How:
- Open Google Postmaster Tools, add your domain, and read the Spam Rate chart. That covers Gmail, which is most of your list.
3. Write the volume ramp down before October
8 campaigns a month becoming 30 in November is a step change, and to a mailbox provider that looks less like a sale and more like somebody bought a list.
How:
- Count a normal month against November’s calendar, then give an AI tool both numbers and ask for a week-by-week ramp.
4. Check your SMS consent records survive a question
Every number needs a record of when and how it opted in, and plenty of lists built through popups and giveaways can't produce one. The busiest sending week of the year is a spectacularly bad time to go looking for them.
How:
- Export your SMS subscribers with the opt-in date and opt-in source columns. Any row missing either one is the problem set.
5. Read your SMS opt-out rate per send, not per month
Monthly churn looks fine right up until you break it down and find one campaign did most of it. That send is the template you’re about to run 6 more of.
How:
- Sort last quarter’s SMS campaigns by opt-out rate, then upload the export and ask AI what the worst 3 have in common.
6. Suppress the dead segment instead of purging it
A subscriber who has ignored you since March will ignore you on Black Friday too, and on Cyber Monday, and in the January clearance, and you pay twice: once on the invoice, once on the sender reputation that decides whether anybody else sees the send.
How:
- Build a segment on no opens and no clicks in 90 days, run 1 win-back at it, then suppress whoever stays quiet.
7. Open the cart flow on both channels and check they don't collide
Most brands built cart abandonment for email, then bolted an SMS onto the same trigger. On a normal Tuesday nobody notices. During Black Friday week the same person gets both inside an hour, twice, which is one way to invent an unsubscribe.
How:
- Screenshot both flows and ask ChatGPT where the 2 timelines overlap, then push the second channel out by 4 hours.
8. Turn the images off and read what's left
Corporate mail clients block images by default. If your offer, your deadline and your button all live inside a graphic, a meaningful slice of your list opens the biggest send of your year and gets a blank rectangle. A blank rectangle has never sold anything.
How:
- Set Gmail to ask before displaying images, then send yourself your best campaign of the year.
9. Count the characters and click every link
A text over 160 characters splits into 2 segments and you are billed for both, which is a cost line nobody looks at until the November invoice.
How:
- Paste your drafts into any free SMS character counter before they get anywhere near the scheduler.
10. Write down what normal looks like while nothing is on fire
Open rates stopped meaning much once Apple started opening mail on everyone’s behalf, and they are still the number most teams lead the Q4 wrap with. Open rate is the participation trophy of email metrics.
How:
- Export the last 90 days, then feed it to an AI tool and ask for a one-page baseline you can actually read.
The takeaway: an audit is only worth running while you can still act on it
None of this is complicated and none of it is fast, which is exactly why it keeps sliding until the quarter it was meant to protect has already been and gone. Nobody is judging you for that. Most teams we talk to are in the same boat every September.
11 weeks is enough to warm a domain, sunset a dead segment, rebuild the cart flow on both channels and still brief the creative. 9 weeks covers most of it. By late October you’re picking which 2 you can get done.
Start with the first one on this list today and you’ll be ahead of almost everybody.
Protein Pints cleared its opening stock in 8 hours
The Grand Rapids brand put Protein Pops online in June and sold through its opening inventory in under 8 hours, beating its own forecast by more than 10 times. Target shelves this week, all Kroger divisions on September 13. 4 flavours, 10g of protein a bar, and a quinoa-studded chocolate coating doing the heavy lifting.
A golf shoe brand just opened a medical division
SQAIRZ has spent years selling stability footwear to golfers, and this week it pointed the same engineering at fall risk in older adults. SQAIRZ Medical launches with SENTRX balance and stability shoes and an advisory board of physicians, podiatrists and physical therapists. Same product thinking, a completely different customer.
Fanttik is launching on TikTok Shop a month before Amazon
Fanttik announced its new Luma K10 Apex dash cam and O11 Pro cordless circular saw this week, and the release order is the interesting part. TikTok Shop and its own site go first in mid-September, Amazon follows in October. The channel you launch on is a decision, not a default.
Annnnd that’s a wrap for this edition!
Thanks for hanging with us today. If this gave you an idea for your next send, share ecomemailmarketer.com with your favorite DTC marketer.
Remember: Do shit you love.
🤘 Jimmy Kim & Chase Dimond
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