Israeli Email Sequences

Instructions

Chok HaSpam Compliance (Amendment 40)

Israeli anti-spam law (Amendment 40 to the Communications Law, in force since Dec 2008) requires explicit opt-in consent before sending commercial email, SMS, or fax. Every message must identify the sender, include a working one-click unsubscribe mechanism honored upon receipt (2 business days is the safe default), and maintain provable consent records (timestamp, source, IP). Statutory damages: up to 1,000 NIS per message without proof of harm, and class actions are common. The Knesset bill that proposed raising the cap to 5,000 NIS in 2024 has been advancing in committee but as of mid-2026 it has NOT passed into law; track Knesset.gov.il for status before quoting any number higher than 1,000 NIS to a client.

Privacy Protection Law Amendment 13 (in force August 14, 2025)

On top of Chok HaSpam, Amendment 13 to the Privacy Protection Law tightens marketing-data rules. Marketing email lists are a "database" subject to the law: you must (1) inform subjects at collection time why you collect data and who receives it, (2) honor erasure and access requests within 30 days, (3) document a Data Protection Officer (DPO) for businesses with 100k+ subjects or sensitive data, (4) report serious breaches to the Privacy Protection Authority (PPA) within 24 hours. Administrative fines under Amendment 13 reach 3.2M NIS (capped at 5% of annual turnover) for severe violations. Apply both Chok HaSpam (consent + unsubscribe) AND Amendment 13 (data rights + breach reporting) when designing sequences.

Hebrew RTL Email Rendering

Use dir="rtl" on the html element AND every table/td. Gmail web/Android renders RTL well; Outlook (desktop + Outlook.com) needs MSO conditional comments wrapping the table. Apple Mail respects dir natively. Font stack: Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif (web-safe only; Google Fonts and Resend's default Inter do not always load in Outlook). Wrap numbers, prices, and English brand names in <span dir="ltr"> to prevent reversal. Note: gmail.co.il is Walla Mail (Israeli webmail), NOT Google. Its rendering engine is closer to Outlook than Gmail, so test there explicitly.

Hebrew Subject Lines

Keep subject lines 40-50 characters (mobile cuts off after ~30 in Hebrew due to wider glyphs). Personalization (first name, city) lifts open rates 15-20%. Israeli benchmarks (Mailchimp + Brevo regional reports, 2024-2025): 22-28% open rate, 2-4% click rate, 0.2-0.5% unsubscribe rate. Best send times: Tuesday/Wednesday, 9-10 AM or 7-8 PM Israel time. Avoid Friday afternoon and Saturday entirely.

Holiday Email Calendar

Active campaign windows: Rosh Hashana (Tishrei 1, Sep/Oct), Hanukkah (Kislev 25, Dec), Tu BiShvat (Shvat 15, Jan/Feb), Purim (Adar 14, Feb/Mar), Pesach (Nisan 15, Apr), Lag BaOmer (Iyar 18, May), Shavuot (Sivan 6, May/Jun), Yom Ha'atzmaut (Iyar 5, Apr/May). NEVER send commercial email on Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10), Yom HaZikaron (Iyar 4), Yom HaShoah (Nisan 27), or during the 7-day shiva period after a national tragedy. Tisha B'Av (Av 9, Jul/Aug) is also avoided by religious audiences. Use the Hebcal API to compute Gregorian dates per year.