Email marketing, why did the results of my newsletters get worse?

Are you concerned about the results of your email marketing campaigns?

Perhaps, when analyzing the reports of your newsletters, you discovered that the results have worsened if you compare them with previous campaigns.

If you’ve been managing your company’s email marketing campaigns for a long time, you could see changes in the results of your newsletters.

Undoubtedly it is a worrying situation, that could harm your digital marketing reputation.

To give an adequate solution to these problems, you will need to understand the reasons that can lead to this reduction of results.

And so, in this article, we will talk about some of the reasons that may affect the results of your email marketing campaigns.

With this information, it will be possible to find suitable solutions to any problems.

Do you have delivery problems with your email campaigns?

Did the results of your newsletters significantly decrease?

Read this post and find out the reasons!

Step by step.

First, you need to know if it’s a trend or this happened only with a few campaigns.

Before you start worrying, you need to look carefully at the statistics, to determine whether you are having a problem with one or two newsletters, or if the results are worsening continually.

You should keep in mind that not all campaigns will have the same results.

Some newsletters may be less relevant to some subscribers because they are not interested in the topic of the message, or because they don’t want to buy the product you are offering at this time.

If it’s just a one-time reduction in your campaign statistics, you don’t have to be overly concerned, although you should always be interested in trying to understand what is happening with your email campaigns.

On the other hand, if you notice that the results have worsened steadily, it will be better to review your strategy. You can start by reading carefully all the information of this article as we will give you various tips to analyze the results of your email marketing campaigns.

Some Reasons for Bad Results in Your Email Marketing Campaigns

The causes can vary, for example:

► Network problems at ISPs

A few years ago, we saw a very curious case. At the time, Microsoft had to stop receiving emails and solve an urgent problem. Their HDs were full, and the servers stopped working.

So for some time, they could not accept emails, and these messages were returned to the sender.

That could happen with other servers.

If this happens, and you’re sending a campaign, all emails will bounce, which means that the delivery rates and the results would be affected.

But of course, it will be something specific, which will be resolved, logically, in a short time.

► Non-existent domains

This may be rare, but it can also occur if you have many contacts from the same domain. If this domain is canceled or is not  available,that will also affect the results of your email marketing campaigns.

A few years ago, the domain terra.es was disabled. All email accounts from that domain were also deleted because the domain was unavailable.

This could affect results on a smaller scale.

► When you add a new database

If you add a large number of new contacts without checking the quality of the mailing list, you may have severe delivery problems.

For example, if you have an old email list that you no longer use, depending on the number of invalid email addresses, you could have problems.

This could negatively affect the reputation of your newsletters, potentially affecting your sender score reputation as well.

If this happens, campaign statistics will get worse.

From this point, we will see more severe aspects that could damage the reputation of your email marketing campaigns. These situations are more severe and therefore would need a more advanced solution.

· Aspects that could affect the results of your email marketing strategy

Here we will see many more points than in the previous section.

But we have to keep in mind that now we are going to talk about aspects that will not be resolved “magically,” you will need to understand what is happening and solve the problem manually, or request help from a professional specialized in email marketing.

Let’s start with the first one:

► Incorrect technical settings

I know, sometimes it may seem that we talk too much about the SPF record.

But it’s a fundamental setting.

The SPF record is a necessary technical configuration.

And it should always be correct.

We often get in touch with customers who try to explain that they don’t understand why they should care about it since they had good results without the SPF record. As it stopped working now, they believe  that the problem could not be related to any DNS setting.

Well, that is not true. In fact, there are many factors that can affect the delivery of emails:

1.  On the one hand, SPF is not the only configuration that ISPs will review
2.  When sending newsletters using an email marketing software, you will usually work with shared IPs, so the reputation of IPs can also help improve the sender’s reputation.

But that doesn’t mean we should not fix it as quickly as possible.

In fact, if you don’t correct the DNS settings, it will be much harder to get good results.

That is why one of the first things we should do when we see that the results of our email marketing campaigns are getting worse is to check the technical settings.

►Changes to ISPs

Another aspect that we should consider and take into account are the possible changes done by some ISPs.

Changes in the rules, in the way they will evaluate what is or is not spam, etc.

For example, a few months ago we discussed how Microsoft changed its reputation metrics, among other parameters. Of course, this may affect the delivery rate of your email marketing campaigns.

This change may affect the delivery rates, so you could see changes in your results, even without doing anything to harm your reputation.

We should be aware and check with the email marketing provider.

► A large number of spam complaints

If users begin to report your newsletters as spam, little by little the results of your campaigns will start to worsen as your reputation will start being negatively affected.

That is extremely serious because even if you can correct the problem and stop receiving spam complaints, your reputation has already been damaged. Recovering what was lost will be much more complicated  and will require time and hard work.

We may have spam complaints due to some reasons:

1. Problems in the strategy for getting new subscribers. Even if the email list is double opt-in, when users have questions about the type of content they will receive, you may have problems with unsatisfied  subscribers, as they were expecting to receive different content.
2. When you send a large number of sales emails or content that isn’t relevant to your subscribers. Your content strategy should be appropriate for your subscribers.
3. If you don’t include an unsubscribe link or add too many steps for users who wish to stop receiving your emails. If you do that, the only option to unsubscribe from your newsletter will be to flag your email as spam.

Therefore, it is important to review all SPAM complaints using the information available in your email marketing software to determine if one of your customers is not happy with your emails, or whether you need to review your digital marketing strategy, due to the large  number of users who don’t wish to receive your newsletters.

Solving these problems as soon as possible prevents a drastic reduction in the statistics of your newsletters.

That problem presents another one.

► Reduction in Engagement Level

If subscribers start to lose interest in your emails, your general sender reputation will be reduced, which will affect your delivery rate.

Why?

Because when the engagement level is reduced, most ISPs will reduce the number of emails delivered directly to the inbox and add these emails to the spam folder.

What can we do?

The secret, in this case, is to filter and detect subscribers who are no longer interested in your newsletters, to work with them differently, using an advanced strategy, explicitly created to try to recover these contacts.

The important thing is not to continue sending the same type of emails to them because this could aggravate the problem.

You have to keep in mind that some of your contacts aren’t interested in your newsletters, but they will never take the time to unsubscribe; they will just delete the emails without reading the messages.

► Problems in the contents of the newsletters or the HTML code

The content of your emails can also affect the results of your email marketing campaigns.

For example, in Mailrelay, we have seen cases where toolbars used in browsers such as AdBlock AdBocker were inserting HTML ad code in the newsletters. Many filters block these extra codes, which could be a problem when you are trying to improve the results of your  emails.

However, fortunately, these types of situations can be detected using Mailrelay’s spam reporting button.

So that you can solve the problem before sending the newsletter.

· Contacting your email marketing software for support

If you think there is a problem with your email marketing campaigns, after checking the previous steps, you should contact the support team of your email marketing software, so they can help you review your technical settings, give you other tips and information on what you can do to improve the results of your email marketing campaigns.

Working with people who know how to solve these problems and others is one of the advantages of working with a good email marketing support team.

·  Summarizing

In this article, we looked at some of the causes that may affect the results of your email marketing campaigns. Some of these causes can be punctual:

1. Network problems at ISPs
2. Unavailable domains
3. A high number of new contacts without revision

Unlike these specific causes, there are some situations that, if not checked immediately, could severely damage your sender reputation:

1. Incorrect technical settings
2. Changes in ISPs
3. A large number of spam complaints
4. Reduction in Engagement Level
5. Problems with newsletters or HTML content

It will be essential to be aware of the metrics and statistics of your campaigns, analyze possible problems and, if necessary, contact the technical team of the email marketing software.

I hope this article will be useful to help you improve the results of your newsletters.