Solved

Significant drop in Open Rates

Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi,

For some time now, we’ve had strong Open Rates for our broadcasts - in the early 70’s on average.  However since Feb/March, they have dropped significantly down to the late 50’s.  

 

Digging a little deeper, I can see that Gmail seems to be the culprit as the Open Rate for these subscribers was around 70% in January but is now just 45% :( 

 

I’m quite concerned by this as Gmail subscribers make up around 60% of our base.

 

Does anyone know what could have caused this and how can I fix?

 

 

icon

Best answer by Bobby 18 April 2024, 11:37

View original

10 replies

Bobby
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +17

Hi @Dan N,

Will try my best to help out here!

For starters, have you registered your domain on Google’s Postmaster Tools? This will allow you to see how Google/Gmail is rating you as a sender, showing you reports such as domain reputation and IP reputation. It will also share with you spam complaint rate for Gmail recipients on an aggregate level, something that Klaviyo isn’t able to report on because there is no feedback loop between Gmail <> Klaviyo.

Let me know if you’ve registered there and what you’re seeing for reporting! Otherwise, an immediate step you could take is to adjust your sending behavior to only send to your most engaged Gmail subscribers (e.g. subscribed or engaged in the last 90 days) for a bit.


Cheers,
Bobby

Freelance Klaviyo Marketer | Klaviyo Partner & Community Champion | check out my services: bobbyleonard.me
Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi Bobby, 

 

Thanks for your reply - it’s very much appreciated 👍

 

Unfortunately I am not registered with Google’s Postmaster Tools because I got the following alert when updating my DNS record which put me off massively:

 

“By clicking Continue & Verify, you agree to update 1 DNS records after verifying your identity. Updating DNS records is a risky operation and could potentially affect availability of your website.”

 

Is there an alternative platform/method I could use perhaps?

 

I predominately email our highly engaged subscribers (clicked or opened in the last 90 days) but have included campaigns to our inactive base recently (but separate segments/sends) - but it’s the highly engaged segment where I’m seeing the drop in Open Rates.

 

Thanks,

Dan

Bobby
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +17

@Dan N ah, yeah, any time you’re making updates to your DNS that disclaimer message will appear.

If it adds any comfort, for example, I’ve personally helped adjust the DNS records for a couple of dozen brands and (thankfully) have never experienced such an issue, despite that disclaimer message appearing. Most of the adjustments I made were relatively straightforward ones such as here (e.g. adding a singular TXT record). But, understand the hesitancy given the disclaimer message received. It’s rather standard and recommended practice for brands who send to Gmail recipients to create a Postmaster account. But, understand the hesitancy given the disclaimer text when modifying DNS records.

Postmaster is the only official platform to view your sender reputation directly for Gmail. Reviewing the data there would probably best help you determine next steps.

Below are a few other investigative questions that could be worth asking, too:

  1. Is there a correlation with click rates decreasing, or is it only open rates that are impacted?
  2. Has sending infrastructure been updated to comply with the new Google & Yahoo regulations (view guide)?
  3. Have there been any changes with subject lines, preview text or sender name/from email address?
  4. Have there been any changes with message content (e.g. adjusting from plain text to image-based)?

 

Cheers,
Bobby

Freelance Klaviyo Marketer | Klaviyo Partner & Community Champion | check out my services: bobbyleonard.me
Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi Bobby, 

Thanks for the peace of mind - I’ll will look into the postmaster/ DNS ASAP in that case.

In reply to your investigative questions:

  1. No, only seems to be affecting Open Rates. In fact, our Click Rates have increased 
  2. Yes I did everything back in January to ensure we comply and I got the thumbs up from Klaviyo
  3. Only for four out of our five Klaviyo accounts/ markets have changed sender name to be sender compliant but the drop in Open Rates has also happed to our Klaviyo account/ market where we haven’t changed the sender name
  4. No, we’re still using the same template at the moment 

Thanks,

Dan

Bobby
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +17

@Dan N great, let me know what you see there in Postmaster once you’re in. The Spam Rate, IP Reputation and Domain Reputation views will be the more useful ones.

It’s encouraging and positive to hear that your click rates have increased for the highly engaged subscriber segment.

Based on what you’ve shared and other cases I’ve come across, my current hypothesis is that Gmail might be sending more emails to spam for your “disengaged” audience than before. It’s possible that a lot of the opens from this audience have been machine opens, which can extend to Gmail users who add their Gmail inbox to their Apple Mail account. Those machine opens will occur to messages delivered to the inbox. But, I don’t believe they’ll occur for messages delivered to spam, which is how open rates could decrease.

That’s just a hypothesis - but, can be tested by segmenting out your machine opens vs. non-machine opens, as well as reviewing the data that Postmaster shares with you. If you have a lot of contacts who have only recently (i.e. in the last 90 days) opened an email via machine open and not performed any other action (i.e. clicked an email, been active on site, or have ever placed an order etc.), it could be worth suppressing them or only sending to them on rare, high-impact occasions (e.g. your BFCM or top seasonal sales if in retail).


Cheers,
Bobby

Freelance Klaviyo Marketer | Klaviyo Partner & Community Champion | check out my services: bobbyleonard.me
Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi @Bobby, 

Thanks for the additional info - I will most definitely keep you posted. 

I have now verified my domains with Postmaster but I think it’s too early for it to pull any data in at the moment but I’ll keep checking.

 

I just double checked and whilst our Click Rates are up overall, they have actually decreased for Gmail (from 0.53% to 0.35%). I guess this makes sense as it correlates with a decrease in Open Rates for Gmail.

Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi @Bobby ,

To keep you posted, I had an interesting update from Klaviyo: 

 

I've reviewed your account settings and recent Campaigns, and I haven't found anything that points to any kind of technical issues impacting your Campaigns.  Klaviyo has been working to filter out opens and clicks from bots, so what you are most likely seeing is the result of these efforts.  Rather than counting all opens whether they were done by an actual human or a bot (such as machine opens, Google image proxy, etc), you are seeing more refined data more properly targeting real human activity.  This should give you a better view overall of how profiles are interacting with your emails.  Your rates are still well within what we would consider a good range, and you can continue monitoring using best-practices identified in this article: Getting started with email deliverability monitoring and performance metrics. 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

Hi @Bobby,

 

I have been checking Postmaster intermittently in the last week and keep getting this message:

 

Does it need a few weeks to collect data perhaps?

Bobby
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +17

@Dan N yeah, that would be my assumption as well. Hopefully after a few weeks of steady traffic to the domain after you registered for Postmaster Tools, the data will begin to display.

And thanks for sharing that reply from Klaviyo support. That could certainly explain the recent drop in Open Rates as well.

Freelance Klaviyo Marketer | Klaviyo Partner & Community Champion | check out my services: bobbyleonard.me
Dan N
Rank
Badge +3

No worries @Bobby  - thanks for your input here too :)

Reply


Most helpful members this week

Terms & ConditionsCookie settings

Links & Resources

Platforms

Partners

Useful Things

About

  • Terms and Privacy
    © 2024 Klaviyo All rights reserved. Klaviyo and the Klaviyo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Klaviyo, Inc. or its affiliates.