Bookmark This: The GetSpiked Email Strategy for Holiday Act Remediation

The Holiday Act is complex. It is so complex, in fact, that even the IRD has struggled with compliance. It’s no surprise that major enterprise-sized companies are now retracing years of payroll calculations to correct underpayments and make remediation payments to current and former employees.

We recently supported one such company—an enterprise with thousands of staff globally—through the execution of a large-scale email campaign to notify over 6,000 affected employees.

Here’s how we helped them get it right.

The Challenge

After re-running payroll records back to 2010, the business identified thousands of current and former employees entitled to remediation payments.

1. Current employees were easy to contact via internal channels.
2. Former employees, however, presented a bigger issue. While the company had personal email addresses on file, their existing email software (like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor) prohibited sending to those contacts under anti-spam rules.

They needed a compliant way to:

1. Notify former employees
2. Validate their identity securely
3. Manage the communication load without overwhelming the team

Our Five-Step Email Communication Plan

We built a robust, scalable strategy to ensure effective delivery, privacy compliance, and manageable rollout.

1. Setup

1. Clean and verify the list of personal email addresses.
2. Segment contacts into tranches of 500 to avoid overloading response channels.
3. Set up a fresh sending environment outside of their existing marketing platform.
4. Built an HTML email template (starting from their internal design) with an unsubscribe link.
5. Test thoroughly across devices and inboxes.

2. Deployment

1. Send the first tranche of 500 emails, testing two subject lines for engagement.
2. Track results: opens, clicks, and bounces.
3. Re-send to non-openers using the better-performing subject line.
4. Repeat the process for each subsequent batch, every two weeks.

3. Completion

1. Compile a final report showing engagement data and verified contacts.
2. Deliver a clean, updated contact list for internal records.
3. Delete all data from our system to maintain privacy and security standards.

The Outcome

Thousands of former employees will be notified successfully, identity verification forms will be completed through the company portal, and the client will avoid legal pitfalls around unsolicited email communications.

What You Can Learn

Don’t leave communication to chance if your business is undertaking a similar remediation process. A well-structured email strategy can reduce risk, increase response rates, and keep your team from being overwhelmed.

Need help setting it up? We can help