Hey — and Happy New Year 🎉
Before we jump into anything tactical, I want to rewind to something that happened at the beginning of last year.
If you were sending meaningful volume in early 2025, you probably remember it.
Yahoo quietly flipped a switch.
Over the course of days — not months — newsletters that had inboxed for years suddenly stopped performing.
Opens fell off a cliff.
Revenue disappeared overnight.
Under the hood, Yahoo wasn’t gradually throttling senders.
They were instantly filtering and deferring nearly 100% of volume from certain senders.
Messages began bouncing with TS04 errors.
Inbox delivery stopped almost immediately.
Entire newsletters were effectively shut off overnight.
What made it worse?
Most publishers didn’t realize what was happening until weeks later — long after damage was done.
That moment was a wake-up call:
Inbox behavior isn’t static.
ISPs don’t warn you.
And what worked last year won’t automatically work this year.
That’s why I’m bringing this back.
12 Months. 12 Smart Email Moves.
Last year I sent an email breaking the year into one smart email move per month.
It became one of the most saved and forwarded emails I’ve ever sent — because it reflected how inboxes actually behave, not how we wish they behaved.
Inbox algorithms are seasonal.
Subscriber behavior is seasonal.
Most sending strategies ignore that.
So here it is again — updated for 2026 — with one key addition:
Why each move actually matters.
January — Establish Your True Sending Floor
Reset your Base Sending Segment
Tighten to recent openers and clickers
Strip out holiday-only engagement
Why this matters:
January sets your baseline reputation for the year. Yahoo and Gmail now recalibrate faster than ever — the signals you send now become your default trust level.
If engagement drops across all sources in January, it’s not seasonality.
It’s a deliverability problem being exposed.
February — Lock Down Yahoo & Gmail
Segment Yahoo and Gmail separately
Send only to high-intent openers and clickers
Allow Outlook to scale more aggressively
Why this matters:
Post-2024 updates changed everything. Yahoo now reacts as fast — or faster — than Gmail.
If Yahoo or Gmail slip in February, recovery becomes slow and painful.
Outlook lags — use it for controlled expansion only while Yahoo and Gmail stay clean.
March — Audit Sources Through a Yahoo Lens
Measure activation and complaints by ISP
Kill sources that underperform on Yahoo
Promote sources creating repeat Yahoo + Gmail clickers
Why this matters:
Yahoo is now the fastest indicator of bad acquisition.
If a source can’t activate on Yahoo, it will eventually hurt every inbox.
March is where bad data gets removed before it compounds.
April — Watch Complaint Signals Closely
Monitor Google Postmaster Tools
Watch Yahoo Sender Hub
Check SNDS for Outlook
Why this matters:
Spring is when ISPs tighten enforcement.
Small complaint spikes now turn into throttling and blocks later.
May — Expand Carefully (If You’ve Earned It)
Layer in dormant high-value clickers
Expand based on historical intent
Avoid volume-for-volume’s-sake
Why this matters:
Inbox trust compounds slowly — and collapses fast if you expand too early.
June — Rethink Reactivation
Reactivate based on real-time signals
Stop mass re-engagement blasts
Why this matters:
Sending to the wrong dormant users hurts more than not sending at all.
July — Optimize Frequency, Not Content
Reduce frequency for low-intent subscribers
Maintain cadence for clickers
Let engagement set schedules
Why this matters:
Summer fatigue is real.
Over-mailing now trains inboxes to ignore you.
August — Clean, Validate, and Fortify Before Q4
Suppress non-engagers aggressively
Mass re-validate your list using an email validation service
Delete subscribers who never activated
Why this matters:
Invalid, abandoned, and recycled inboxes spike in Q4 — and ISPs punish senders who don’t clean up before volume ramps.
August list validation reduces bounces, complaints, and reputation damage when it matters most.
September — Segment by Intent
Clickers get more
Openers get less
Inactives get nothing
Why this matters:
ISPs reward relevance.
Intent-based sending creates margin for scale.
October — Warm the Inbox for BFCM
Gradually increase volume to best clickers
Test higher frequency on high-intent segments
Monitor Yahoo, Gmail, and Outlook daily
Why this matters:
October teaches inboxes that increased volume is wanted — not spammy.
Get this right, and BFCM becomes a volume lever instead of a deliverability risk.
November — Protect Reputation Over Revenue
Don’t chase short-term RPM
Watch complaint spikes daily
Pull back at the first warning signs
Why this matters:
One bad BFCM week can cripple deliverability for months.
December — Measure What Actually Mattered
Identify sources that produced long-term clickers
Review segments that protected inboxing
Document what scaled safely
Why this matters:
Next year’s growth is decided by what you learn this month.
If there’s one theme to take into the new year, it’s this:
Inbox success isn’t about sending more.
It’s about sending smarter — at the right time — to the right people.
Here’s to a strong, clean, scalable 2026,
Chris Miquel
P.S. If you’re not sure how this applies to your current sending setup, just reply and we’ll walk through it together.
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