- Nuria Hassan28 February, 2025
In the face of falling email engagement, it is not enough to rely on quick, tactical fixes. To truly revive your email performance, you need to tackle the underlying structural issues that lead to declining engagement in the first place. That means rethinking how you segment your audience, how you deliver value, and how you maintain the health of your lists.
The following approaches will help you create emails that earn attention and rebuild the reputation of your domain.
The following approaches will help you create emails that earn attention and rebuild the reputation of your domain.
1: Strengthen Segmentation through Real Behaviour and Unified Data
Segmentation only works when it mirrors how customers think and behave. Treating the entire list as one audience leads to irrelevant content, inconsistent frequency and weak engagement signals that inbox providers interpret as declining interest. The priority is to use the data you already have and turn it into segments that actually matter.
How?
- Create a unified customer view by consolidating behavioural data, product usage, customer service logs and survey responses.
- Use behavioural triggers such as browsing, repeat sessions, drop-offs, lifecycle stages and inactivity windows to shape journeys.
- Add psychographic insights, including motivations, confidence levels and preferred decision style.
- Respect contact preferences by allowing subscribers to choose themes, channels and frequency.
- Prioritise your high-value segment, which often makes up a small percentage of your audience but delivers most of your revenue.
- Build journey specific communication such as onboarding, nurturing, retention and reactivation instead of broad blasts.
Quick Wins
- Start with one behaviour-based segment, such as “visited product page twice in 7 days,” and send them tailored content.
- Split your engaged list by inbox provider to see which providers are suppressing your messages.
- Identify your top 20% revenue group and build a simple dedicated content track for them.
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2: Rebuild the Value Exchange with a Balanced Content Mix
Customers open emails when they feel they gain something from them. If your messages start to sound repetitive and overly focused on selling, the value exchange quickly falls apart. Restoring it means giving people more than offers. It requires a mix of content that informs, supports or gives clarity at the right moments. When emails help customers make better decisions, answer unspoken questions or remove small points of friction, the channel becomes useful again rather than intrusive.
How?
- Mix offers with education, insights and practical guidance.
- Mine internal sources such as support logs and analytics to find real customer questions and pain points.
- Add micro value such as quick tips, reminders or small tools that genuinely help customers.
- Refresh formats and subject lines to reduce sameness and template fatigue.
- Match frequency to customer preferences and natural rhythms rather than internal targets.
Quick Wins
- Turn a top support question into a 2 line tip in your next email.
- Add one non-promotional content block to your highest traffic newsletter.
- Test a new format such as a simple 2 question poll to break pattern fatigue.
3: Improve List and Data Hygiene to Protect Domain Reputation
An earned list is only valuable when it’s healthy. Continuing to send to inactive or invalid contacts weakens your domain reputation, reduces inbox placement and increases the risk of messages being filtered or suppressed. What many teams overlook is how quickly this decline can accelerate. Inbox providers track engagement at the domain level, so every send to a disengaged audience contributes to a long term negative signal.
Over time, this affects not only marketing messages but also important operational communication such as password resets and account notifications. Maintaining list hygiene ensures your email channel remains a reliable, revenue generating asset rather than a silent liability.
Over time, this affects not only marketing messages but also important operational communication such as password resets and account notifications. Maintaining list hygiene ensures your email channel remains a reliable, revenue generating asset rather than a silent liability.
How?
SPF, DKIM and DMARC
These are checks that help inbox providers confirm that your emails are genuine and sent from a trusted source. They work together to prevent spoofing, protect your domain and improve your chances of landing in the inbox. Keeping them up to date supports good list hygiene and protects your overall sender reputation.
Visit: https://wpmailsmtp.com/dmarc-spf-dkim/ for more information.
Visit: https://wpmailsmtp.com/dmarc-spf-dkim/ for more information.
- Use engagement based suppression to pause sends to inactive recipients.
- Run a short reactivation sequence before removing contacts.
- Monitor engagement at the domain level because inbox providers score reputation at the sending domain, not the campaign.
- Keep SPF, DKIM and DMARC aligned and up to date.
- Warm the domain before increasing volume or reintroducing cold segments.
- Avoid irregular volume spikes that can trigger risk scoring.
180 days
Why 180 days?
180 days (roughly 6 months) of no opens or clicks is widely used as an industry best practice for defining true inactivity. Inbox providers see this level of silence as a strong negative signal, which can weaken your domain reputation and reduce inbox placement. Suppressing contacts after 180 days helps protect deliverability and keeps your list healthy
180 days (roughly 6 months) of no opens or clicks is widely used as an industry best practice for defining true inactivity. Inbox providers see this level of silence as a strong negative signal, which can weaken your domain reputation and reduce inbox placement. Suppressing contacts after 180 days helps protect deliverability and keeps your list healthy
Quick Wins
- Instantly suppress anyone who has not opened or clicked in 180 days.
- Identify unengaged Gmail users separately since Gmail suppresses faster than other providers.
- Reduce your next send volume by 10% by removing the coldest contacts and watch placement improve.
4: Honour Contact Preferences to Build Trust and Reduce Churn
It cannot be emphasised enough: customers engage significantly more when they feel in control of how they interact with your brand. Offering them meaningful choices not only builds stronger relationships and improves engagement signals, but it also ensures you stay compliant with data privacy regulations. There are still many organisations that completely overlook this, and in doing so, they risk not only losing customer trust but also facing potential compliance issues.
In other words, giving your audience the ability to choose what they receive, how often they receive it, and through which channels isn’t just a good practice; it’s an essential step in maintaining trust and staying on the right side of the law.
In other words, giving your audience the ability to choose what they receive, how often they receive it, and through which channels isn’t just a good practice; it’s an essential step in maintaining trust and staying on the right side of the law.
How?
- Allow subscribers to choose content themes, preferred channels and frequency.
- Provide a simple preference centre that is easy to update.
- Use preference data to tailor journeys and suppress unwanted content.
Quick Wins
- Add a one click “update your preferences” link to your next email.
- Send regular reminders encouraging customers to update their preferences.
- Offer two newsletter options for a quick segmentation boost, such as “news and insights” and “offers and updates”.
5: Measure the Right Signals and Adjust Proactively
Improving email performance requires tracking the metrics that inbox providers actually use to decide placement. Traditional vanity metrics, like total list size or inflated open rates, don’t tell the whole story and can create a false sense of confidence. Inbox providers focus on signals that reflect genuine user interest, such as delete without open behaviour, consistent engagement over time and how different inbox providers respond to your messages.
Understanding these indicators provides a far clearer picture of email health and helps you correct issues before they turn into deliverability problems.
Understanding these indicators provides a far clearer picture of email health and helps you correct issues before they turn into deliverability problems.
How?
- Monitor engagement by inbox provider such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo.
- Track delete without open behaviour and click reach ratios.
- Watch for fatigue indicators such as falling dwell time (glanced, skimmed, read) and repeat deletions.
- Review send volume patterns and avoid behaviour that appears irregular or risky to algorithms.
Quick Wins
- Pull a quick report showing delete without open rates by inbox provider.
- Reduce the send frequency of any segment showing rising delete activity.
- Test a lighter send schedule for Gmail specifically to see if placement improves.
Ultimately, improving email engagement is about making sure your emails consistently deliver value and resonate with the people receiving them. By strengthening segmentation, rebalancing your content mix, maintaining clean lists, respecting customer preferences, and tracking the right signals, you will not only restore engagement but also future-proof your email marketing efforts.
In the long run, these strategies will help ensure that your email channel remains a strong, trusted, and effective part of your overall marketing strategy.
In the long run, these strategies will help ensure that your email channel remains a strong, trusted, and effective part of your overall marketing strategy.
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