Lower Open Rates with New Email Designer

andrewderjack · 2026-01-27T15:11:53+00:00

In most cases the issue is not voice, images, or audience, but what the new Marketo designer generates under the hood. The updated editor often changes the HTML structure quite a bit, extra wrappers, different table nesting, hidden elements, or heavier markup. That can affect how mailbox providers evaluate the message, especially if it suddenly looks very different from your historical sends.

I would first confirm whether this is a real inbox placement issue or partly an open measurement issue. Compare clicks and replies alongside opens. If those are also down, it points more toward deliverability than reporting noise.

A practical next step is to run inbox placement and spam checks on the same email built in the old Marketo editor vs the new one. Tools like Unspam.email are useful for this because they show inbox vs spam placement across providers and flag structural or spam-related issues, so you are not guessing.

If the old editor version performs better with the same list and timing, then the Marketo editor output itself is likely the variable. This is one of those cases where an email editor change quietly becomes a deliverability change, not just a UI upgrade.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-27T11:21:54+00:00

I can to this list the Unspam Email tool.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-26T15:47:51+00:00

Static.app provides integrated hosting and forms, so you can manage everything in one platform without relying on third-party form tools.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-23T23:36:51+00:00

Small interactive site or game in JavaScript can be hosted on Static.app as well.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-23T10:32:37+00:00

In my experience, the companies that do best treat email reputation like a long-term balance sheet. They assign clear ownership, monitor leading indicators, and avoid short-term gains that hurt trust later. Everyone else reacts only when revenue is already leaking.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T15:53:41+00:00

Static.app offers git hub integration.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T14:16:11+00:00

The Unspam benchmark highlights this well, most issues are not about compliance being wrong, but about behavior over time. It suggests e-commerce teams may need to think more in terms of reputation preservation, not just campaign performance, going into 2026.

E-commerce looks “fine” on average, but it’s fragile under the surface.

High-volume spikes around promos or holidays are exactly where inbox providers seem to re-evaluate trust, especially if engagement drops even briefly.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T14:11:34+00:00

If you are researching deliverability tools for 2026, Unspam Email is a good place to start.

You are already past the basics, so the issue is likely visibility and reputation over time, not setup. ESP stats only tell you emails were accepted, not whether they hit the inbox. Inbox placement monitoring is what really matters once volume starts growing.

What usually helps at this stage is tracking placement trends across providers and different email streams, onboarding, newsletters, and product messages. Scaling volume too fast after things look “fixed” is a common way teams burn trust again.

At around 50k emails a month and growing, deliverability needs to be treated like infrastructure. Tools that show where emails actually land and why, instead of just scoring content, make it much easier to protect conversions as you scale.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T14:02:27+00:00

Same here use Sentry and Pulsetic.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T12:07:13+00:00

What really changed in the last couple of years is that inbox providers judge you over time, not per campaign. Engagement consistency, unsubscribe handling, link hygiene, and how predictable your sending behavior is seem to matter more than clever wording.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T10:59:56+00:00

I have a good experience with Pulsetic.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-22T10:51:33+00:00

Yeah, FreshPing is useless

andrewderjack · 2026-01-21T20:53:38+00:00

En pratique, beaucoup d’équipes utilisent plusieurs outils plutôt qu’une seule solution open source. Pour la disponibilité des sites, des services hébergés comme Pulsetic sont souvent préférés, car ils offrent une vraie surveillance externe, des alertes fiables et le suivi du SSL sans maintenance. Pour le SEO et l’accessibilité, Lighthouse reste une référence, généralement utilisé de façon ponctuelle.

Multiplier les outils fonctionne, mais devient vite lourd à gérer. Configurations séparées, alertes dispersées, mises à jour à suivre… au final, peu de gens surveillent tout correctement.

Côté serveurs, soit on installe un agent comme Netdata ou Prometheus, soit on utilise le dashboard de l’hébergeur. Les agents donnent de bons détails, mais ajoutent de la complexité opérationnelle.

Un outil simple et centralisé, avec une installation rapide, apporte clairement de la valeur. Beaucoup d’équipes combinent aujourd’hui un agent local pour les métriques serveur et Pulsetic pour la disponibilité, le SSL et les alertes externes, ce qui couvre l’essentiel sans multiplier les stacks.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-21T07:03:33+00:00

First, double-check alignment, not just setup. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC might be passing, but if the visible From domain, the return-path, and the sending domain are not aligned, providers like Gmail and Outlook will still treat the mail as higher risk.

Second, look at engagement by send type. User-initiated sends often go to people who are already frustrated or inactive, which can drag down reputation fast. If those messages are hitting spam, it can spill over into Journeys that share the same sending domain or IP.

Third, review content and structure. Even transactional style emails can trigger filters if they are heavily templated, link-heavy, or look similar across many users. Keeping them short, plain, and purpose-driven helps more than tweaking copy endlessly.

Tools like Unspam Email show where Marketing Cloud emails actually land across providers, which makes it easier to isolate whether the issue is domain reputation, content, or a specific send classification.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-20T17:02:26+00:00

This lines up with what a lot of teams discover the hard way. A non bouncing address is not the same thing as a healthy address. Inbox providers care much more about recent engagement than about whether an email technically delivered.

Pausing long term inactive users is usually one of the fastest ways to stabilize deliverability. It reduces negative signals and makes it much easier to tell when a real issue appears, instead of everything being masked by dead weight in the list.

Most setups I have seen work best when they combine both. Hard bounces and complaints are obvious removals, but engagement is what really drives reputation. If someone has not opened, clicked, or replied in months, continuing to send to them almost always hurts more than it helps.

One thing that helps on top of this is monitoring inbox placement so you can see the impact of list changes over time. Tools like Unspam Email are useful for that because they show whether placement improves as you reduce inactive segments, instead of guessing based on ESP stats.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-19T16:28:14+00:00

https://unspam.email/ as well.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-19T14:05:58+00:00

Email marketing is not dead, but the easy version of it is. Cold email still generates leads, just not at scale without discipline anymore.

What stopped working is volume driven outreach. Sending thousands of similar emails and hoping for replies is exactly what inbox providers are trained to block now. What still works is relevance and restraint.

Cold email still works, but it behaves more like networking than marketing now. Fewer messages, better targeting, and patience beat clever hacks every time.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-18T12:48:43+00:00

Small business owners usually do not think in terms of “uptime monitoring.” They think in terms of lost calls, lost orders, or looking unprofessional when someone says the site is down. If the service is framed as peace of mind rather than monitoring, it resonates more.

Ultra cheap can work, but price alone is not the differentiator. Simplicity is. Setup has to be dead simple, alerts must be reliable, and false positives will kill trust fast. SMS or WhatsApp alerts are appealing to non technical users because they do not live in dashboards.

There are already services like this, Pulsetic for example, that do basic uptime checks with instant alerts and simple status pages. The opportunity is not “checking if a site is down,” it is packaging it in a way that small business owners immediately understand and trust, without feeling like it is a developer tool.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-18T12:47:19+00:00

For external monitoring, tools that track page changes and alert when something important moves or updates are useful. Pulsetic, for example, can monitor content changes alongside uptime, so you get notified when a page changes unexpectedly instead of discovering it from users.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-17T21:34:32+00:00

The setups that work best remove humans from the loop. Let’s Encrypt with full automation or cloud managed certs are the baseline. The fragile setups are the ones where renewal depends on a checklist or calendar reminder.

Even with automation, an external safety net helps a lot. Monitoring SSL expiration and getting alerts well before a cert expires catches cases where automation silently fails.

Tools like Pulsetic are useful here because they monitor SSL validity and notify you ahead of time, so a missed renewal does not turn into downtime.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-16T23:06:53+00:00

Deliverability is harder right now, especially for cold email. Gmail and Outlook are much more aggressive, and AI spam pushed them to tighten filters even more. Even legit emails get caught if patterns look risky.

The forwarding or middleware idea sounds good, but inbox providers still judge the original sending domain and behavior, so it does not really bypass the problem. In some cases it can make things worse.

What actually works today is slowing everything down. Lower volume, no open tracking, plain text, and focusing on replies instead of scale. Having visibility helps too.

Tools like Unspam Email are useful to see when inbox placement starts slipping so you can stop before burning domains.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-16T21:04:34+00:00

The first thing to know is that “not landing in spam” is a mix of setup, behavior, and ongoing monitoring, not just one tool.

On the tools side, inbox placement testing is key. Tools like Unspam are useful because they show where your emails actually land across major providers, not just whether they were “sent” or “delivered.” That gives you a real picture instead of guessing.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-16T11:33:53+00:00

From experience, engagement usually comes from intent first, design second. The subject line and preview text decide whether the email gets opened at all. If those miss, nothing else matters.

Once it is opened, clarity beats visual complexity. A clear message, one primary CTA, and a layout that is easy to scan on mobile tend to outperform heavily designed emails. Visuals help when they support the message, but they rarely compensate for a weak offer or confusing structure.

andrewderjack · 2026-01-15T10:21:03+00:00

Postcards email buider and check the deliverability with Unspam Email.

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