Maintain a consistent performance of your app and website using Throttling

Hey Reader,

We hope that our weekly tips have helped you fast-track your user engagement and retention goals. We are back with another Tip of the Week from EngageClass! We're sure you'll enjoy reading and implementing this one!

Maintain a consistent performance of your app and website using Throttling

Problem Statement

You want your messages to reach your users immediately to witness higher engagement and conversions. While your wish is reasonable, the downside of this tendency is that it increases the risk of server overload.

How?

Let's assume a scenario where you've sent a limited-time offer push notification to 1.5M+ users. As users click on the notification to open your app around the same time, the sudden surge in traffic raises the risk of overload on your backend system. And even if you're highly prepared, the unanticipated load may cause server slowdown or outage (in extreme cases).

So, what can you do to maintain a consistent performance of your app?

We’ve got you covered! 🙂

You can enable Throttling on the WebEngage dashboard and spread your messages over time. Here’s how it works👇

How to maintain a consistent performance of your app and website using Throttling?

Throttling allows you to limit the number of messages that can be sent per minute, enabling you to maximize user outreach without taking the unnecessary risk of backend overload.

You can set a throttling limit for all campaigns sent through Push, SMS, Web Push, Email, and WhatsApp.

Here’s how you can enable throttling for different channels on the WebEngage dashboard:

Step 1: Go to the Settings > Throttling section on your WebEngage dashboard.

Step 2: Specify the maximum no. of messages that can be sent per minute for each channel. 

Step 3: Click Save. 

Let's understand how throttling supports your user engagement efforts:

Throttling helps you reduce the load on your backend system

Let’s take the example where you have a user base of 1.5M, and you wish to send out promotional messages to all these users. Your backend system can sustainably support up to 40% (600,000) of them at any given time.

Using throttling, you can specify a messaging limit of 25,000 messages per minute, reduce the risk of backend overload, and engage with your entire user base in 60 minutes.

Throttling helps you maintain a high email domain reputation

Let’s say you regularly send out bulk emails to your audience of 5M+ users. After some time, you notice that your audience no longer receives your emails in their inbox because of your low email domain reputation. 

While troubleshooting the issue, you get to know that large volumes of emails are often considered spam by mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Apple Mail, etc.).

Using throttling, you can limit the number of emails you can send per minute and avoid sending bulk emails.

This helps you maintain a high email domain reputation resulting in higher engagement and conversions.

Throttling helps you manage the volume of incoming customer calls

Let’s say you’ve recently launched a new product and sent campaigns to inform your users about it. As soon as your users receive your campaigns, they call on your Customer Support number to know more about your offering. Due to limited bandwidth, your Customer Support team gets overwhelmed by the number of incoming calls.

Using throttling, you can limit the number of promotional messages that you send out from each channel.

This will enable you to send out messages over a while, allowing your Customer Support team to function effectively.

You can also enable throttling at a campaign level. For example, if you've set a throttling limit of 20k for a push campaign, then 10k messages per minute will be sent to Android and iOS users, each. 

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So, what are you waiting for?

Enable Throttling Now

Got questions? Please feel free to drop in a few lines at support@webengage.com or get in touch with your Account Manager in case you have any further queries.🙂

Happy Engaging!