Why a cooldown period is needed
In e-commerce several triggers can fire on the same user at once: an exit-intent popup, a
personalized banner, a push notification about an abandoned cart, a welcome offer for newcomers.
Without a cooldown period the user receives all of it in a single visit — which very often ends in
an unsubscribe or a block.
A cooldown period answers the question: which message to send next, and when, when there are
grounds to send several.
Cooldown levels
In mature marketing systems the cooldown operates on several levels:
| Level | What it limits | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Global | Any communication to the user | No more than 1 message every 4 hours |
| Channel | One channel type | Push — no more than once every 12 hours |
| Campaign | One specific scenario | Abandoned cart — no more than once every 48 hours |
| Thematic | A group of similar campaigns | All welcome scenarios — no more than once every 7 days |
Tip: start with the global cooldown, then add the channel level. The campaign level is needed
for scenarios with a high risk of repeat firing — an abandoned cart, for instance.
Cooldown and prioritisation
When a cooldown blocks a send, the system has to know what to do next: defer the message, replace it
with another or skip it. The typical strategies:
- Queue and delay — the message is queued and sent once the cooldown expires.
- Priority-based — out of several queued messages, only the highest-priority one is sent.
- Drop — some messages (urgent events, promotions with a deadline) lose their meaning once the
cooldown expires and are simply cancelled.
Cooldown versus frequency capping
Both mechanisms curb intrusiveness, but in different ways:
- Cooldown is a time buffer: no sooner than N hours after the last send.
- Frequency capping is an impression limit: no more than N times in 7 days.
A well-designed system uses both. Frequency capping stops five impressions accumulating over a week;
a cooldown stops three of them going out inside a single hour.