07/27/2026
Your open rates look fine. That's exactly the problem.
Open rate only counts emails that arrived. It tells you nothing about the 30–40% that landed in spam, promotions, or nowhere at all.
And "cleaning your list" won't fix it — because the damage lives at the domain level, not the contact level. You can scrub your list perfectly and still land in spam.
A real recovery has three layers:
→ Infrastructure first — authentication records, sending domain, IP reputation. The invisible work everything else depends on.
→ Reputation rebuild — send smarter, not more. Start with your most engaged segment and rebuild trust with inbox providers the same way you rebuild a credit score. Slowly. Consistently.
→ Structural maintenance — the systems that keep it from breaking again. Automated hygiene. Engagement-based segmentation. Monitoring what actually matters.
120 days. All three layers. Built to hold.
Email is still the highest-ROI channel in your stack. But only if your emails actually arrive.
💬 Which layer is your business currently missing?
https://vist.ly/5ck7c
