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Easter and Black Friday in Greece: peak-load orchestration for notifications

In Greece the two biggest e-commerce / notifications peaks are: Orthodox Easter (Holy Thursday–Holy Saturday — travel + gifts) and Black Friday (last weekend of November). At Easter 2025 SMS volume rose 4.7×; at Black Friday 6.2×. Without preparation, notifications queue 30+ minutes — practically useless.

Problem

Two weeks before peak, Greek SMS gateway throttle limits start showing. Without pre-warmed IPs, dedicated routes and autoscaling capacity, your „delivered" lags. By then the customer is gone — and the brand is remembered as „the one that broke on Black Friday".

Legal framework
ΕΕΤΤ Κανονισμός 991/2022 (peak-period reporting)

During exceptional periods, carriers expect bulk senders to declare projected volume and schedule.

Ν. 3471/2006 άρθρο 11 (marketing timing)

Marketing SMS not allowed 22:00–08:00 or on public holidays without explicit timing consent.

Architecture
01

Pre-warm queue

10 days before the peak, daily volume ramps gradually by 15%/day — carriers raise our standing on their allowlist.

02

Burst capacity reservation

We reserve extra bandwidth on the tier-1 gateway for the peak window. Premium cost, but guaranteed throughput.

03

Scheduling with fairness lottery

When approaching rate limits, the dispatcher uses fairness lottery: transactional priority > marketing, high-value > low.

04

Real-time monitoring

Dashboard shows live send rate, p50/p95/p99 latency, success rate per operator. Auto-rerouting to secondary gateway on incident.

Code
json
{
  "campaign_id": "black_friday_2026",
  "scheduling": {
    "window": ["2026-11-27T08:00:00+02:00", "2026-11-29T22:00:00+02:00"],
    "ramp": { "pre_warm_days": 10, "daily_increase_pct": 15 },
    "fairness": {
      "transactional_priority": 10,
      "marketing_priority": 4
    }
  },
  "capacity": {
    "reserved_tps": 800,
    "secondary_gateway": "tier1_b"
  }
}
Sample message
SMS

YourBrand: Black Friday — 40% off all sportswear until Sunday. Exclusive to you. Shop: yb.gr/bf26. STOP to unsubscribe.

Before launch
  • Pre-warm begins 10 days before peak
  • Capacity reservation with tier-1 gateway
  • Fairness lottery configured on the dispatcher
  • 24/7 real-time dashboard monitoring during peak
  • Pre-declared volume to Cosmote/Vodafone GR/Nova
  • Marketing time-window review (22:00–08:00 hold)
What 4notify does differently

Ready-built orchestration for the two biggest Greek peaks — pre-warm queue + capacity reservation + secondary gateway, all without scrambling engineering during peak week.

FAQ
How much surge does standard pricing cover?

Up to 3× average baseline; beyond that, peak-pricing kicks in with clear markups disclosed 30 days in advance.

Do you cover other Orthodox holidays?

Yes: 15 August (Dormition), 25 March (Annunciation + Independence), Christmas. Holidays auto-trigger „marketing hold" unless overridden.

What if the peak gateway fails?

Failover to a secondary tier-1 gateway in under 60 s. The dashboard logs the switch and the volume catches up.

Start free

14 days, no card. Greek-language support.

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