Noticed a weird shift in my email open rates after switching tool sets

I used to get maybe 15-20% opens using Mailchimp for my moving company's newsletters, but after I moved to a smaller tool called SendFox about 3 months ago, that number jumped to almost 35% out of nowhere. I think it might be because the new tool delivers faster or catches less spam filters, but I honestly can't prove it. Has anyone else seen a big change in open rates just from swapping their email platform?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia_anderson7d ago

Honestly, that's a wild jump and I totally get why you're scratching your head over it. Ngl, I've had similar weirdness happen when I swapped from Constant Contact to a different provider for my own stuff, and the change was just as random. It's super frustrating when you can't really pin down the reason because you just want to know what's actually working. Tbh, I think a lot of it comes down to deliverability and how each platform plays with spam filters, even if it feels like a crapshoot sometimes. Solidarity on trying to figure it out because it drives me nuts too when the numbers don't add up.

ray_miller847d ago

I gotta push back on the "deliverability and spam filters" thing though. I mean, I swapped from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign and actually SAW my open rates drop like 15% at first. But once I checked the actual click rates and bounce rates, they were basically the same. People just stopped opening as many emails because the subject lines were different and the preview text changed. It's not always some spam filter conspiracy. Sometimes it's just a different audience on a different day looking at different content. Plus, if you're comparing raw numbers month to month without accounting for your email frequency or list growth, that's a huge variable right there. I've had periods where I send 3 emails one month and 5 the next and the rates get all wonky. Not saying your situation isn't real, just that I've been burned way too many times blaming the platform when the real issue was my own approach or timing.

miles_garcia6d ago

Wait, has anyone else noticed how Apple's Mail Privacy Protection totally threw a wrench in open rates as a metric since like 2021? I read somewhere that it basically makes open rate data useless for a lot of senders because it pre-loads images in the background. So that 15% drop you saw could've been partly that, not just subject lines or timing. Your point about click rates staying the same is key though. I had a phase where my open rates tanked but my actual sales conversions from emails barely changed. Makes you wonder how many people are chasing a vanity metric that's been broken for years.