My email open rates dropped to 10%. What went wrong?
I run a newsletter with 5,000 subscribers. My open rates used to be 35-40% but now they're down to 10%. I haven't changed my content or sending schedule. I'm sending every Tuesday at 9 AM. What happened?
1 Answer(s)
A drop from 40% to 10% is dramatic and it's almost always one of three things. First, check your sender reputation. Did you recently send to a bad list, get marked as spam by many people, or use a new email sending tool? Gmail and Outlook heavily penalize sender reputation. Use a tool like Mail-Tester to check your score.
Second, your subject lines probably got stale. Even if you think they're good, your audience has seen 50+ of them. Try a completely different angle. Numbers, questions, and urgency still work best. "5 mistakes killing your open rates" beats "Weekly newsletter #47."/p>
Third, Gmail's 2024 update put most promotional emails in a separate tab. Your 10% might actually be 30% if people are just not checking the Promotions tab. Add a line at the top of your email: "If this doesn't display right, click here to view in browser."
Also, clean your list. Remove anyone who hasn't opened in 6 months. A smaller, engaged list will always outperform a big, dead one. You'd rather have 2,000 subscribers at 35% open rate than 5,000 at 10%.