Online Express emails dropping in open rates

Kenzie Brown
Kenzie Brown
Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 December 2023 Challenge: Season of Giving
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hi! Our alumni director has been sending out emails through Online Express and noticing a severe drop in open rates. Typically she sees ~50% open rates, and now seeing <6%. I don't even know where to start to begin troubleshooting this. Any advice on what to look into? It doesn't seem to be something that would just happen out of nowhere.

Thanks!

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Comments

  • Dina Rieman
    Dina Rieman
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Kenzie Brown

    Hi Kanzie,

    I wonder if it might have something to do with the changes for email authentication best practices that Gmail and Yahoo Mail began enforcing in February 2024. The BB notice said in part “Gmail and Yahoo! Mail (and all email domains supported by Yahoo! Mail, like AOL) will route emails that do not meet the new best practice requirements to “Junk” and “SPAM” and/or reject the emails outright which will reduce your ability to reach your constituents using bulk emails.

    If you are seeing a drop in open rates, it may be that many of the emails are going to junk and/or spam. Use this Knowledgebase article for more information.

  • Aldera Chisholm
    Aldera Chisholm Community All-Star
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    @Kenzie Brown In addition, Apples mail security settings have greatly impacted open rates on emails due to how it's privacy system is set up so it can be artificially inflated by that, and then impacted as per Dina's note. All this makes open rates a hard metric to measure reliably.

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