| name | israeli-email-sequences |
| description | Design email marketing sequences for the Israeli market with Hebrew RTL rendering, Jewish and national holiday scheduling, and anti-spam law compliance. Use when user asks about Israeli email marketing, Hebrew email campaigns, Chok HaSpam compliance, Hebrew newsletter design, or holiday-triggered email sequences. Covers Amendment 40 compliance, RTL rendering, and subject line optimization. |
| license | MIT |
| compatibility | Works with Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex. |
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.
ESP Availability in Israel (2026)
Mailchimp, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), SendGrid, Resend, Customer.io, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign all serve Israel without restrictions (no GDPR-style data residency requirement after Amendment 13; Israel was confirmed by the EU as having adequate protection, and the post-Amendment-13 adequacy review concluded favorably for marketing-data flows). HubSpot, Iterable, Constant Contact also work. Local Israeli ESPs (Smoove at smoove.io, ActiveTrail, Rav Messer, InWise) ship native Hebrew RTL templates and Israeli holiday calendars by default. For Hebrew-first deliverability and SMS combined, ActiveTrail or Smoove typically beat US-based ESPs. ActiveTrail completed a Bird (formerly MessageBird) acquisition discussion in 2024 but as of mid-2026 still operates under the ActiveTrail brand; verify current ownership in your contract before assuming pricing stability.
DMARC and Authentication (mandatory at scale in 2026)
Yahoo and Google enforced DMARC requirements for bulk senders starting February 2024. Any business sending more than 5,000 commercial emails per day to either inbox provider MUST have:
- SPF: pass aligned with the From domain.
- DKIM: pass aligned with the From domain (DKIM2 rollout in progress; legacy DKIM still accepted).
- DMARC: published policy at minimum
p=none (Google requirement), with rua aggregate reporting.
- One-click unsubscribe: RFC 8058
List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click plus a working mailto: / HTTPS endpoint.
- Complaint rate: kept under 0.3% (Google soft threshold).
Israeli ESPs (Smoove, ActiveTrail) ship this configured by default; US-based ESPs require you to set custom-domain DKIM and align the From domain explicitly. Failing these for bulk traffic results in spam folder placement or outright rejection in 2026.
Sequence Types
- Welcome (5 emails over 10 days): Day 0 brand intro, Day 2 value prop + lead magnet, Day 4 social proof with Israeli customers, Day 7 product showcase with NIS pricing, Day 10 limited offer.
- Cart Abandonment (3 emails: 1h, 24h, 72h): reminder, social proof + urgency, discount in NIS.
- Post-Purchase (4 emails: 1d, 7d, 30d, 90d): thank-you + delivery, how-to-use, review request, replenishment/cross-sell.
- Re-engagement (3 emails: 30, 45, 60 days inactive): "we miss you", best-of digest, win-back offer or sunset.
- Holiday (1-3 emails per holiday): teaser, main offer, last-chance.
Examples
Example 1: Build Hebrew Welcome Email Sequence
User says: "Create a 5-email welcome sequence for Israeli subscribers"
Actions:
- Email 1: Welcome + brand story (send immediately, Hebrew RTL)
- Email 2: Value proposition + free resource (Day 2)
- Email 3: Social proof with Israeli customers (Day 4)
- Email 4: Product showcase with NIS pricing (Day 7)
- Email 5: Limited offer + urgency (Day 10)
- Include unsubscribe link per Israeli spam law (Chok HaSpam)
Result: 5-email Hebrew welcome sequence with Chok HaSpam compliance
Example 2: Create Hebrew Abandoned Cart Recovery
User says: "Set up abandoned cart emails for our Israeli e-commerce store"
Actions:
- Email 1: Reminder with cart items (1 hour after abandonment)
- Email 2: Social proof + urgency (24 hours)
- Email 3: Discount offer in NIS (48 hours)
- All emails: RTL layout, NIS pricing, Hebrew subject lines
- Include proper opt-out mechanism per Chok HaSpam
Result: 3-email Hebrew cart recovery sequence with Israeli compliance
Bundled Resources
Scripts
scripts/email_compliance_checker.py -- Validates email content against Israeli Chok HaSpam requirements. Run: python scripts/email_compliance_checker.py --help
References
references/chok-haspam-guide.md -- Complete guide to Israeli anti-spam law (Chok HaSpam, 2008), opt-in requirements, penalties (up to 1,000 NIS per message), and compliance checklist. Consult when building any email marketing for Israeli audiences.
Gotchas
- Israeli anti-spam law (Chok HaSpam, Amendment 40) requires explicit opt-in consent, not just opt-out. Agents trained on US CAN-SPAM rules may suggest opt-out-only flows, which violate Israeli law.
- Privacy Protection Law Amendment 13 (Aug 2025) layers data-rights duties on top of Chok HaSpam: 30-day access/erasure response, 24-hour breach reporting to the PPA, DPO appointment for large lists. Agents trained pre-2025 may miss this entirely and only address Chok HaSpam.
- Statutory damages under Chok HaSpam are up to 1,000 NIS per message without proof of harm. Class actions multiply this fast. Amendment 13 administrative fines reach 3.2M NIS for severe violations. Agents tend to understate legal risk.
gmail.co.il is Walla Mail (Israeli webmail), not Google. Its RTL engine behaves more like Outlook than Gmail. If you only test against Gmail, you will miss broken rendering for a real chunk of Israeli recipients.- Commercial email must never be sent on Yom Kippur, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaShoah, or during national mourning periods. Agents may not have these dates in their calendar and could schedule campaigns during sensitive periods.
- Hebrew email RTL requires
dir="rtl" on both the HTML element and every table/td cell. Agents may only set it at the top level, causing rendering issues in Outlook (common in Israeli businesses) and Walla Mail.
- Numbers and English text within Hebrew emails need
dir="ltr" span wrappers to display correctly. Agents often forget this, causing phone numbers and prices to render in reverse order.
- Israeli ESPs (Smoove, ActiveTrail, InWise, Rav Messer) ship Hebrew-RTL templates and Israeli holiday calendars out of the box. Agents default-recommending Mailchimp/SendGrid leave Hebrew users with worse defaults and broken Outlook rendering.
- DMARC enforcement for bulk senders (Yahoo + Google, since February 2024) catches Israeli businesses sending without aligned authentication. SPF and DKIM must match the From domain, plus a published DMARC policy (
p=none is enough to pass acceptance, p=quarantine or p=reject recommended for established senders). If your campaign suddenly lands in spam, check DMARC alignment first.
- Israeli businesses often send transactional email from a different domain (e.g., support@) than their marketing email (marketing@) and forget to publish DKIM for both. Both must authenticate independently or the marketing domain will silently lose deliverability while the transactional one stays fine.
Reference Links
Troubleshooting
Error: "Hebrew email renders LTR in some clients"
Cause: Email client ignoring dir="rtl" attribute
Solution: Add dir="rtl" to the outermost table AND each content cell. Use inline CSS direction: rtl; text-align: right; as fallback. Test in Outlook (common in Israeli businesses).
Error: "Unsubscribe link not meeting legal requirements"
Cause: Chok HaSpam requires specific unsubscribe format
Solution: Unsubscribe link must be clearly visible, work with one click, and process within 2 business days. Include physical address and sender identification in Hebrew.
