What if your open rates start to decline? And when should you start to worry?

I was talking to one business owner yesterday who was looking for help with their emails.

She said that she has no idea what’s going on with their emails.

Everyone who is on their list has signed up through their opt in form. That’s good.

Still, her open rates are slowly getting lower and lower over time.

So, the first thing that came to my mind was to ask how old is the list.

She told me that the list is few years old.

And when was the last time they cleaned their list?

To which she said that they’ve never done that.

So the list is slowly dropping with open rates and they have never cleaned their list.

It’s a pretty strong case, that her open rates declining was just something that happens naturally.

When you don’t remove inactive emails from your list, your open rates will decline over time. Because people lose interest after some time, but they won’t bother unsubscribing.

That’s why you have to push those guys through reactivation campaign. Offer them something to stay and get them active again or let them go, your list will be in a lot better shape when you do that.

When should you really worry about open rates going down?

If you notice a huge drop in your open rates, then it’s time to start worrying.

For example, going down from 30% average open rate to only 15% in one email. If you aren’t doing any drastic testing, then this is not normal!

It’s usually a sign that your deliverability has a problem. So you need to find out what caused it and sort it out ASAP.

Are you happy with how your emails perform? If not, let’s give your email strategy a checkup and uncover where you’re losing money.
Schedule a call with me here.

Cheers,
Zoran