Engagement / Deliverability dropping with each campaign

[Ctrotter01]

I could use some insight on if I need to adjust something I am doing, or if this is a pattern that others have been seeing. I have been consistently hovering around a 40-45% open rate with a click rate of about 2% and an unsub rate of about 1% (150-250 or so each campaign). I have been experiencing a drop in open rates, click rates, even unsubscribes in the past month. A precipitous drop in fact. The past month the campaigns have dropped open rates from 45 down to 35 down to 20 down to 10%?! Unsubs are down to a couple dozen. Clicks are down but not significantly. I checked my deliverability with several spam/blacklist/firewall sites and all passed with flying colors, so it's not on our domain side of things. Has anyone else experienced a significant drop since the beginning of the year? I should note that I have been authenticated for a long time, the content didn't take a 180° turn, and my contact lists are clean and not new. Thanks in advance for your input.

[Ctrotter01]

Hello @Ctrotter01 ,

To be honest, looking at your emails they've varied quite a bit all the way from 10% to 70% throughout the past year, but closer to 20-30% for the majority. Even just recently you had an email with an open rate of over 60% and others of 40 or higher. The same goes for unsubs (which you want to keep low anyway), and click rate - they vary a bit, but have been consistent. Additionally, based on your account's contact growth reporting, your main source of lost contacts is from deletions - not unsubscribes.

For info on checking your overall reporting stats and trends, I'd advise checking out these articles:

• Email Reporting Overview (includes info on account Reporting tab)
• Contact Growth Report (available via Reporting tab)
• Contact Engagement Insights (available via Contacts tab)

As far as improving your stats, if you feel like you're in a downward trend, consider some of the following when creating and sending your future emails:

• Are you utilizing the suggestions in our article on improving open rates?
• Are you utilizing the suggestions in our article on improving click rates?
• Are you optimizing certain aspects of your sendouts like the subject line or personalization? Would your contacts want to be addressed by name?
• Compare your latest emails to your emails from the same time period as previous years. Does the trend in opens and clicks match up with those previous years? Is your number of contacts significantly higher or lower than previous years? Are your emails longer or shorter than prior years?
• Based on your industry, is there anything occurring in your business type, local area, country, or in the world that might be affecting peoples' interest in your content?
• How often does your content change? Are your contacts expecting the same content with each sendout, or are they expecting new content each time?

[William_A]

Hello @Ctrotter01 ,

To be honest, looking at your emails they've varied quite a bit all the way from 10% to 70% throughout the past year, but closer to 20-30% for the majority. Even just recently you had an email with an open rate of over 60% and others of 40 or higher. The same goes for unsubs (which you want to keep low anyway), and click rate - they vary a bit, but have been consistent. Additionally, based on your account's contact growth reporting, your main source of lost contacts is from deletions - not unsubscribes.

For info on checking your overall reporting stats and trends, I'd advise checking out these articles:

• Email Reporting Overview (includes info on account Reporting tab)
• Contact Growth Report (available via Reporting tab)
• Contact Engagement Insights (available via Contacts tab)

As far as improving your stats, if you feel like you're in a downward trend, consider some of the following when creating and sending your future emails:

• Are you utilizing the suggestions in our article on improving open rates?
• Are you utilizing the suggestions in our article on improving click rates?
• Are you optimizing certain aspects of your sendouts like the subject line or personalization? Would your contacts want to be addressed by name?
• Compare your latest emails to your emails from the same time period as previous years. Does the trend in opens and clicks match up with those previous years? Is your number of contacts significantly higher or lower than previous years? Are your emails longer or shorter than prior years?
• Based on your industry, is there anything occurring in your business type, local area, country, or in the world that might be affecting peoples' interest in your content?
• How often does your content change? Are your contacts expecting the same content with each sendout, or are they expecting new content each time?

[Ctrotter01]

William,

I think the point of this post was widely missed. 

• I have no concern on my contact loss, I am aware of my deletions, they were purposeful. 
• I am aware that I want to keep my unsubscribes low, but my concern is not that they are low. It is the vast drop in ALL metrics that I have experienced.  
• Yes my open rates are varied substantially, but if you looked at the lists and number of contacts you would notice that a lot of those ups and downs are either to very focused or limited lists, or to customers with extremely specific targets... as well as having to RESEND several campaigns due to reporting and sending errors on constant contacts end which I have had to call about several times in the past several months. 
• My concern is that for several months I have been steadily increasing my rates and within the past 2-3 weeks or so, ALL metrics have dropped, dropped too significantly to not be noticed, and at rates that I have never seen with any company before. 
• In fact we use another campaign platform for another branch of the company, and have not seen anything close to these issues. 

I appreciate the response while glossing over any of the issues I am experiences.

[William_A · Accepted solution]

I wasn't glossing over your issues, simply pointing out that you've had some of your highest open and click rates within the past month, and you've only sent a few emails since the start of the new year. 

Have you gone back to look at your previous emails' open and click rates? Looking at your emails' reporting, I'm seeing similar dips in open rates going from January 2023 into the late winter and spring of 2023, before they pick back up again in the summer. A similar thing happened in 2022. 

One thing I'm really noticing with your latest emails is that they're almost 100% image-only, which email clients and their spam-filtering tend to not like, regardless of your authentication setup or sending reputation. For example, your Feb 2 custom code email with the "low" 15% open rate was just a singularly massive image with a single link. Such a setup tends to scream "risky email" to receiving email clients' algorithms - even with you, us, and even your contacts setting everything up perfectly to ensure your email gets delivered to the contact's inbox. Even if they don't outright bounce it, it's more likely to get spam filtered.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you're concerned about your open and click rates, you may want to take some time to observe some patterns in your sending and previous years' metrics, to see which emails had your highest metrics. Read through the articles I linked, including the one in this post, and see where you can adjust for better engagement with your audience. 

You're also welcome to speak with our Delivery team, if that's where your concern for your emails lies.

[Access5151]

I have seen this same issue occur but only with CTR, & we switched from image only email to a more text-image ratio balanced design. My CTR on my image only emails are better, and the others are declining! I'm at a loss.

[Caitlin_M]

Hi @Access5151. Looking at your email reporting for the past 90 days with the account used to comment here, I see a consistent click-through rate and they are image-only emails, not a mix of text and image. Is there a different account you are using? If so, please email us at communitysupport(at)constantcontact(dot)com with your username and examples of campaigns that have the image only and text/image mix.