My reply rate dropped off a cliff in the spring, from around 8% to under 2%, and it turns out a big chunk of emails were going straight to spam. I was sending about 80 a day from my main work address.
What I’ve done since:
– Set up a second domain just for outreach, similar name
– Proper SPF, DKIM and DMARC on it
– Warmed it up slowly over 3 weeks, starting at 10 a day
– Cut sending to 30-40 per inbox per day
– Removed tracking pixels and links from the first email
Reply rate is back to about 6% now. Not sure which of these changes mattered most.
Questions: are you still using open tracking at all? Does anyone think the separate domain looks shady to editors? And how many inboxes are you running to keep volume up without burning them?
.
