From 7% to 40%: How We Revived Our Email Open Rates (And What You Can Learn)
Imagine watching your email open rates plummet by a staggering 78%. That's exactly what happened to us at Masthead. It wasn't a slow decline; it was a cliff dive.
We had gone from 30 to 40 percent open rates on our emails to barely breaking 7% in some cases. It was BAD.
To me, as a content marketing agency leader, it was downright alarming. And also confusing since, as a content marketing agency, we always aim to craft super high-quality content people actually want to read. Many of our emails (like Search Signals and our newsletter) were editorial in nature and not selling anything. So why weren't they getting through?
Three different reps at our CRM tried to convince me that the changes were seasonal or due to new Apple email policies—but this couldn't explain such a sudden decline. Most of our emails go to business email addresses, not personal ones most impacted by the changes.
My team and I did our own deep dive. One of our Masthead email strategists (a person who typically works with our clients) opened my eyes to "engaged" and "non-engaged" contacts, sender reputation, and deliverability. She explained why continuing to send to non-engaged contacts can put a stranglehold on your emails, stifling their ability to reach recipients who love hearing from you.
Even if your emails show up for you as "delivered" it's likely they're bypassing the recipient’s inbox, getting placed in the no-person’s-land of the promotions or spam folders. By this point, your sender reputation is becoming increasingly damaged—which affects your chances of getting seen by anyone you send to.
The fix? Immediately stop sending emails to anyone who hadn't engaged (clicked, opened, anything) in the previous eight weeks, and ONLY send to people who've demonstrated that they care about your brand and content by interacting with it. For us, it meant nearly 70% of our list wouldn't receive our emails. At least, not until things improved.
“Chopping our list was a tough pill to swallow, but we almost immediately saw a change in deliverability, opens, and engagement. The next email had a 25% open rate. The following one had a 30% open rate.”
Yes, the rates improved because a greater percentage of the list was composed of highly engaged people, but the total number of opens per email improved by an even greater degree. One of our most recent email open rates was nearly 40 percent. I did a double take when I saw that one!
We're also working on a separate effort to check in with non-engaged folks in small groups to see if we can opt them out of any emails they don't want. Inboxes are bursting, and we always want to be a welcome part of their digital experience (not something to repeatedly ignore or delete). It’s still to be determined whether or not these smaller outreaches are successful and worth doing—I’ll report back on it on my LinkedIn once we’ve made the determination.
With the future of SEO up in the air, the humble email (and that list that you own) is going to be more important than ever. This is a great time to do an audit of your own email best practices (are you continuing to email people who are repeatedly ignoring your efforts? Have you been cleaning up your bounces?) and start making some changes.
If you’d like to connect with me about Masthead’s experiences, I’m happy to share all the unfiltered details. Just shoot me a note or set up a time to chat.
