What should I do when my newsletter open rate drops to about 30%?
Short answer
Switch to sending mainly to recent openers. My rule is that any newsletter at or below a 30% to 33% open rate should send primarily to people who've opened recently, and I had my team audit every brand against that line. Low engagement tells inbox providers you might be spam, which pushes you further down.
My line is 30% to 33%. Any of my newsletters at or below that open rate shifts to sending primarily to openers. When I set the rule, I had my team go through every brand and flag anything at 33% or lower.
"Any newsletter at or below a 30 to 33 percent open rate should shift to sending primarily to openers."
Why send to openers instead of everyone?
Deliverability. If Google and the other email providers see low engagement from a lot of your recipients, they assume you're spam and stop putting you in the primary inbox. Then even your engaged readers stop seeing you.
Sending to the people who actually open keeps your engagement signal strong. You're protecting the readers you have.
When my team started sending only to people who'd opened in roughly the last two weeks, a teammate noticed one newsletter jump from about 34% to 63%. Keep in mind that's measured on a smaller, more engaged group, so it isn't the same as the whole list suddenly reading more.
Isn't that just hiding a bad number?
No, it's triage. A healthy local newsletter runs around 50%. At 30%, something's off: maybe a cheap, fast-growing audience that engages less, though I can't prove that's the cause.
Why does this get more serious as you grow?
Scale. At a certain size, if you're not doing things correctly, the whole thing can blow up.
What if the drop is sudden?
A small drop while you're growing fast is expected. Facebook puts your ad in front of more people, and some of them aren't ideal fits. A big drop in a few weeks is a different problem.
One of my newsletters went from 42% up to around 47% to 50%, then fell to 34%, with the issue sent that day tracking toward 28%, out of the blue. That's a huge drop. When I posted about it on Twitter, a bunch of people said they had the same problem, and one pointed me to a tool that checks the status of your domains and links.
The tool was GlockApps. Using the free version, it flagged our branded links. My email platform had promoted a branded-link setting for a while, we turned it on for that newsletter, and later the setting wasn't even on their site anymore. The tool was calling out exactly those links.
"It's probably worth it if and when you need it, but not yet."
That's my take on paying for a deliverability tool. It looked a little expensive, so don't buy one in advance. But if your open rate falls off a cliff, check your links and domain before you blame your readers.
Openers-only, or delete the rest?
| Move | When I'd use it |
|---|---|
| Send primarily to openers | Open rate at or below 30% to 33%, as a fast fix |
| Remove people with no engagement in 90 days | A deliverability problem on a list where a big share has gone quiet |
On one of my lists of about 12,000 people, a deliverability expert told me 3,900 hadn't engaged in 90 days. I covered that decision in should you remove unengaged subscribers.
What should you do this week?
- Pull the open rate for every newsletter you run.
- Flag anything at or below 33%.
- If a drop was sudden, test your links and domain first.
- Switch the flagged lists to sending mainly to recent openers.
- Look at what those lists have in common: acquisition cost, market size, sending gaps.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From Local Media HQ podcast episodes and client and partner calls in 2025 and 2026. Last updated .