Open rates on our Email Campaigns have significantly dropped

[MBasemera]

Hi 

In the past 3 months, our email open rate has dropped significantly. Specific emails that had an open rate of above 30% + are now having only 9 or even less. Big emails that had an open rate of an average of 18-21% are now showing even less than 7 also. 

I have spent months testing this to ensure it is not my domain that is the reason for this poor performance. After April, I used 2 different domains, on both sequences and marketing email /workflows. - Sequences worked much better - meaning my domain is still great. 

To be honest, this sequence is not a long-term solution for a marketing person. Hence I need help to understand why is the email campaigns having low open rates

[BérangèreL]

Hi @MBasemera,

Thank you for checking with the Community!

Can you please confirm that you have followed the steps of this article "Manage your email authentication in HubSpot"?

I have also found similar threads that might help you:

- The solution from @Aseemgupta on this post "Poor Email Open Rate"
- The solution from @karstenkoehler on this post "Drop in email open rate"

I also wanted to invite a couple of subject matter experts to this conversation: Hi @Jnix284, @Phil_Vallender and @Alex_Elborn do you have tips to help @MBasemera understand the sudden drop, please?

If you'd like more information about the drop in the email open rate, I would recommend connecting with HubSpot Technical Support, as Support is included in your subscription and they will be able to provide real-time assistance for this matter, including hopping on a screenshare if necessary.

Thank you and have a brilliant day!

Best,
Bérangère

[MBasemera]

Thank you @MarieBeranger . I will review this again. We have been following the email practices, but out of no where, our performance just took a deep. If it was 1 or 3 per cent lower, I would not be concerned - but it went from 20% to less than 7% overall. For even the engaged contacts

[Opveng]

What I would suggest is to check and implement the following things which might improve your open and click rates

1. Check the number of unengaged contacts you have in your CRM (You can create a list and define unengaged criteria like people who haven't opened the last 8-10 emails). You can then exclude this list while sending out emails so that only the engaged ones receive your emails and you get better click and open rates.

2. Create a list of bounced contacts in the CRM and exclude them while sending out your emails.

3. Check the industry standard open and click rates for your industry to check if yours is an anomaly or it adheres to the industry standards.

4. Optimise your Subject lines. That is something which has helped my company a lot because that is the first thing people read when they receive your email.

All the best with your efforts!

[MBasemera]

@Opveng Thank you for this. I like your suggestions. I have created a list of bounced, unengaged contacts, follow up actives and other lists. The only list that we have to keep creating is the softbounces. We seem to have so many soft bounces but we cannot create an active list from this. Is there a way to do this without having to create lists every time?

[Opveng]

Hi,
I'd suggest that you do not exclude soft bounces as soft bounces normally
mean that's there's an temporary issue and not a permanent one like hard
bounced ones. The other lists you created should be enough to take care of
your email delivery and health.

[MBasemera]

@Opveng  We have quite a lot of contacts that are always on softbounce. So I was wondering if they should be always be put in a separate list. If a contact bounces (soft bounce) more than 3 times, add it to a list. Something like this. 

We have the other lists and always exclude those lists in our mailings. 

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @MBasemera it is likely that if you're sending to the same audience and you haven't made significant changes to your email structure (subject lines, preview text, etc.) that your open rates haven't actually dropped, they've just become more accurate.

With the changes made by email service providers (Apple and Google) to using a bot to scan emails, this triggers an "open" that is being filtered out by HubSpot.

Having stricter parameters in place for what classifies an "open" has had a pretty significant effect for most users. As a result, open rate is also not the metric it once was (if it was ever truly valuable to begin with).

I would focus on your email health score, how are your emails performing for those that are opening? What does your bounce, unsubscribe, and spam rate look like?

You can still work to improve your open rate by using tools like subjectline.com, generating AI subject lines and running A/B tests.

[MBasemera]

@Jnix284 Thank you. I will review this again.