That week I accidentally tanked our email open rates by 40%

Last Tuesday I got excited about a new subject line testing tool and swapped out our whole campaign calendar mid-week. Opened up the analytics Friday morning and saw open rates dropped from 22% to 13% across 8,000 subscribers. Turns out the tool was adding extra tracking parameters that triggered spam filters on Outlook and Yahoo. Spent all weekend sending apology emails and fixing the links. Has anyone else broken something big by testing new tools too fast without checking the backend first?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlesj4625d ago

What kind of testing tool was it? I'm curious because most decent ones let you preview the tracking parameters before you deploy, but I've seen a few that hide that stuff in the advanced settings. Did their support team actually own up to the spam filter issue or try to blame it on something else?

amygonzalez25d ago

Right @charlesj46, was this one of those "all in one" marketing platforms that promises the moon but hides everything in the advanced settings? lol. I had almost the exact same thing happen with a tool last year where the support team just blamed it on the customer's email setup for weeks before finally admitting it was their own spam filter flagging the tracking links. The preview screen showed clean URLs, but once deployed they added this hidden redirect that set off every spam alarm. I spent a whole month tweeting with their support and they kept saying "try clearing your cache" and "check your DNS settings" before they finally fessed up. It's so frustrating when they act like you're doing something wrong when it's clearly their software. Did they at least give you a real fix or just a pat on the back and a "sorry"?