Open Rates and Clicks have dropped significantly since March

[DarrenTheThird]

In March, we were seeing ORs in late 20s, early 30s %.

And getting click rates of nearly 4%.

Today, we are sending emails and lucky to get over 10% OR or near 2% CR.

It's the same type of content / offers which have been consistently popular with our mailing list. And we've never seen this sort of drop off in the past (over many years).

The only thing we've done in the last few months is clean up our mailing list - removing people who weren't opening / clicking emails for 6 months.

We expected the changes to have had the opposite effect - we are emailing fewer people and only the most engaged people after all.

I've checked and the people who were clicking in March are still getting our emails, but now apparently not opening and clicking.

I've also noticed that in March, HubSpot was reporting the vast majority of our opens were coming from Chrome (over 50%), whereas that now only accounts for less than 5%.

(I'm still not 100% clear on what Chrome email client is?)

Has anyone else experienced similar issues?

And / or does anyone know of any email client or HubSpot changes since March which could be causing this drop in performance.

Our domain health is fine. We have all the authentications set-up correctly (SPF, DMARC, DKIM).

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

Hi @DarrenTheThird. With that many years in, it has to be frustrating to see something change this drastically and not be able to chase it down. I feel that. 

We've seen metrics drop some as well, and are having a hard time getting to the bottom of it. I'm wondering if dedicated domains rather than the shared HubSpot domain would help? I found this gem when researching: 

Review IP Reputation:

• Use tools like MXToolBox to check if your sending IP addresses are on any blocklists. If they are, work with HubSpot to resolve these issues or consider using a dedicated IP address.

I know the privacy changes are catching up to us and folks are simply not sharing as much data, which could affect open rates - but I would think click rates would still be measured more accurately. 

Keep asking the questions around this. Maybe other folks have insights as well, and maybe if it's a HubSpot issue they'll have a fix. I know they care deeply about our collective success. 

[DarrenTheThird]

Thanks Pam. 

Just an FYI, I've been in email marketing for over 10 years, and in that time this is the most targeted / engaged list I've worked with. I've never seen numbers like this before or such as a significant drop off in performance. Especially after making changes which should have the opposite effect.

I'm aware of best practices, etc. on our side. And I've done all the necessary checks with our domain.

The content we are sending is on our most popular topics historically and doing really well on other channels.

It appears that HubSpot needs to investigate what has changed / could be impacting from a sender IP perspective, from a platform / reporting perspective and/or from an email client perspective.

I've seen there are other posts from March/April time on this issue, which aligns with when we saw the drop off. So clearly something has happened around that time, which is impacting our ability to reach people's inboxes (probably going to junk, promotion, or other folders). 

[PamCotton]

Hey @DarrenTheThird, thank you for posting in our Community and sharing the detailed information about your email open and click rates!

The drop in opens from Chrome might be due to changes in how email clients handle opens, especially with privacy features like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection affecting open rate tracking.

Removing inactive subscribers should improve engagement, but it’s possible the remaining audience isn't as engaged. Re-evaluating segmentation might help.

To our top experts, @danmoyle and @TomM2 do you have any recommendations for @DarrenTheThird matter?

Thank you,

Pam