Why are my email open rates low and how can I improve deliverability?

Key findings

• Deliverability issues: A sudden and uniform drop in open rates across all email providers often points to underlying deliverability problems, where emails are being filtered into spam.
• Sender reputation: A low sender reputation is a primary driver of poor inbox placement. This can be influenced by spam complaints, high bounce rates, and low engagement.
• Engagement levels: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) heavily weigh subscriber engagement (opens, clicks) when determining where to place your emails. Low engagement signals a lack of interest, potentially leading to spam folder placement.
• List hygiene: Sending to unengaged or invalid email addresses can severely harm your sender reputation and drag down open rates, even for engaged segments.
• Content and relevance: If emails consistently fail to resonate with recipients, reflected in low open rates even when reaching the inbox, it suggests a need to re-evaluate subject lines, preheaders, and overall content strategy.

Key considerations

• Diagnose the issue: Determine if the low open rates are isolated to specific providers or are a widespread problem across all recipients. This helps in pinpointing the root cause. You can learn more about how to diagnose and improve email deliverability and open rates.
• Prioritize engagement: Focus on strategies that encourage opens and clicks, as this is a primary signal to ISPs that your emails are valued. This includes optimizing subject lines and tailoring content.
• Clean your list: Regularly remove inactive subscribers and unengaged contacts from your email list to improve overall list hygiene and sender reputation. This can also help when you experience a sudden drop in email open rates.
• Monitor sender reputation: Keep an eye on your sender reputation metrics, including complaint rates, bounce rates, and blocklist status. Consistent monitoring allows for proactive problem-solving. More information on email deliverability can be found in this guide on email deliverability.
• Authenticate your domain: Ensure your email sending domain is properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to prove legitimacy and build trust with email providers.

Key opinions

• Widespread impact: When open rates drop evenly across all email providers, it suggests a broader issue than just a single ISP filtering your mail. This points to potential sender reputation problems or content relevance issues.
• Transactional email concern: It is particularly concerning when even critical transactional emails (like appointment reminders) suffer from low open rates, indicating a severe deliverability issue affecting even highly anticipated communications.
• Audience interest: Low open rates, even if emails reach the inbox, might indicate that recipients are simply not interested in the subject lines or the brand's content, requiring a shift in content strategy.
• List quality: Marketers frequently emphasize that maintaining a clean and engaged email list is fundamental for improving and sustaining high open rates and overall deliverability.

Key considerations

• Segment analysis: Marketers should segment their open rates by recipient domain to identify specific deliverability blockages. If rates are uniformly low, the problem is likely broader. This can be critical when seeing a decrease in open rates, for example, on Yahoo and AOL.
• Recipient expectations: Ensure that emails sent align with recipient expectations set during the opt-in process and that content remains relevant to their expressed interests. This also applies when Gmail open rates drop for new subscribers.
• Regular list cleaning: Implement regular practices to remove inactive subscribers and verify email addresses. This is consistently highlighted as a fast way to boost open rates and improve deliverability. Find out more on improving email deliverability.
• Subject line optimization: Pay close attention to subject lines and preheaders, as these are critical for encouraging opens, even if the email successfully reaches the inbox.

Key opinions

• Engagement as reputation: Experts consistently point to recipient engagement as a critical factor in sender reputation, advocating for strategies that actively encourage opens and clicks to boost inbox placement.
• Holistic audits: A comprehensive audit of technical configuration, opt-in practices, marketing programs, and segmentation is recommended to diagnose complex deliverability issues effectively.
• Email type matters: The type of email (bulk vs. transactional) can influence deliverability expectations and troubleshooting approaches, although severe issues often impact both.
• Bounce indicators: High bounce rates, particularly hard bounces, are strong negative signals that can significantly damage sender reputation and lead to poor deliverability.
• Thresholds for concern: Specific open rate benchmarks (e.g., below 18%) are often cited by experts as indicators of a declining reputation or engagement problem requiring immediate attention.

Key considerations

• Prioritize engagement: Implement strategies that drive engagement, as this is a primary signal to ISPs that your emails are valued. This helps to boost your sender reputation and improve inbox placement, preventing your emails from going to spam.
• Perform a comprehensive audit: Consider a professional audit of your email program, including technical setup (like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM), list acquisition practices, and content strategies. This also contributes to improving your domain reputation using Google Postmaster Tools.
• Monitor bounce rates closely: Act immediately on any indication of increasing bounce rates, especially hard bounces, by removing invalid addresses and identifying potential causes.
• Understand ISP signals: Recognize that ISPs interpret low open rates as a signal of disinterest, which negatively impacts your reputation. This requires a focus on continually refining your email program to ensure recipients see value in your communications. Al Iverson provides further insights into focusing on engagement.

Key findings

• Authentication standards: Mandatory implementation of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is essential for proving email legitimacy and is a baseline requirement for major ISPs like Google and Microsoft.
• Reputation monitoring: Tools like Google Postmaster Tools provide valuable data on sender reputation, spam rates, and IP reputation, which are direct indicators of deliverability health.
• Complaint rates: High spam complaint rates are a severe negative signal that can quickly lead to blocklisting and severely impede inbox placement.
• Domain and IP reputation: Both your sending domain and IP address carry a reputation score with ISPs, which is influenced by sending volume, consistency, and recipient interaction.
• List quality: Documentation often implies that maintaining a clean list, free of invalid or unengaged addresses, is fundamental to a positive sender reputation and good deliverability.

Key considerations

• Implement DMARC, SPF, DKIM: Ensure your domain has correctly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. These are fundamental authentication methods that prove your email's legitimacy and are essential for modern email deliverability. Read our simple guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
• Regularly check postmaster tools: Utilize postmaster tools from major providers (e.g., Google, Outlook) to monitor your sending domain and IP reputation, identify issues like spam complaints, and track authentication success rates. This can help with complying with Outlook's new sender requirements.
• Minimize spam complaints: Adhere strictly to permission-based sending, provide clear unsubscribe options, and send relevant content to avoid spam reports. High complaint rates lead to rapid degradation of sender reputation and can result in your IP or domain being put on a blocklist (or blacklist).
• Manage unengaged subscribers: Implement re-engagement campaigns and remove persistently unengaged subscribers to improve overall list quality, as ISPs prioritize delivery to active recipients. Campaign Monitor offers further insights into factors that affect email deliverability.