Use frequency control settings to ensure that a contact doesn't receive too many emails within a specific period.

You can set the maximum number of messages a contact receives in a specific period, and then set the period in days. The maximum number of days is 31. It is based on a 24-hour time stamp interval.

Note: Acoustic Campaign must initially enable this feature for you. Contact your account manager for further details about this feature.

To see these settings, go to Settings > Administration > Organization Settings > Frequency Control. 

Behavior for frequency control settings and exceptions

When the user clicks Send, Acoustic Campaign looks for reasons that a send to a particular email address might need suppression. The following are reasons why an email can be suppressed.

• The contact opted out.
• The contact is on the master suppression list.
• The send maximum been reached according to frequency control.

After the email is sent, Acoustic Campaign updates who the email was sent to.

If a delay between the user's click and the actual send occurs, frequency control can get thrown off. This happens in the following various situations:

• Long sends
• Scheduled sends
• Sends with STO (updates in real time)
• Multiple sends in flight
• Sends with pre-blocking selected

For example, you set up an immediate send to a large group of people with much dynamic content. The time between when Campaign prepares the send and when the send leaves might be lengthy for any number of reasons. During the preparation, Campaign evaluates frequency control rules (along with other suppression reasons). Sometime later, the send leaves Campaign and the send is added to the frequency control count.

If you send several emails with similar delays, frequency control can get off track. The same happens when there are multiple emails in flight, when users schedule sends for a time in the future, and for Sends with STO enabled.

A contact in an Acoustic Campaign database for ACME Chocolate Company, is named Shirley Temple. Shirley signed up for various chocolate notifications and emails. Shirley signed up for newsletters for dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mint chocolate, Swiss chocolate, and hot chocolate. That's five newsletters. At the same time, ACME Chocolate has Campaign's frequency control set up tightly - only three emails can be sent to any one contact over the span of five days.

Below is an example of what certain sends can do with frequency control.