How to Spot Deliverability Problems Without Open Tracking

In today’s post, I’m going to cover the layman way of spotting a deliverability problem without tracking open rates, or doing any complicated tests yourself.

Many of us running cold email campaigns send good campaigns. The copy is solid, and tools like Clay allow for wild personalization and very specific ICP data to be collected. Our campaigns at times should at least get a 1-3% reply rate.

BUT…

Then you start sending and realize…crickets. How? We did all the right things! Why is no one responding.

What do people do? They look at their open rates, see that its above 40% and say “WOW, well we’re definitely hitting the inbox, our opens are better than the industry average!”

The problem? Opens are dead. For years, they have harmed your deliverability because they are essentially adding more “material” on your email body, that of which Google and Microsoft sniff out. Since IOS and other updates over the years, open tracking is actually so inaccurate, it’s un-trackable. Some devices open emails automatically, some don’t. Your 60% open could be 35%, your 25% could be 45%.

To make it worse, Google’s new update in 2024 now makes it extremely easy to mark someone as spam if they’re tracking opens. This is because open tracking is adding an “image” to your email, that of which Google can spot easily.

Open tracking is really dead, not relevant, and at this point harmful for your cold email campaigns. Stop it :)

Google’s update is just a nail in the coffin to the existing corpse of open tracking…it’s been limp for years.

Here’s what you need to do if you want to spot deliverability problems without tracking opens or even doing crazy tests.

• Track reply rates for deliverability

• Track bounce rates for deliverability

• Track sending volume for deliverability

1. Tracking Reply Rates Appropriately

In my opinion, the single biggest indicator of deliverability that makes me question things the quickest is reply rates. Reply rates themselves vary A LOT, do not think there is a standard benchmark. I’ve had clients who’s offer is very commoditized, with a big TAM. They have 1%-1.5% reply rates, and only 5-10% of those become leads.

I also have clients like SysCloud who absolutely crush reply rates

For us, the general window of reply rates we look for before signals even go off is 1% and above. This is because there are SO many factors to take into account. If you’re running a 1% reply rate, after 25000 emails, and you’re pitching an SEO offer with an automated email with no personalization…you might be landing in the inbox just fine.

The closer we get to 1% reply rate, the more skeptical you should be, once it drops below that, I would definitely look deeper or reach out to a cold email deliverability firm (biased 😉 ) for help. This is especially true if you think your email copy and target list are actually good.

2. Tracking Bounce Rates Appropriately

For us, the general rule of thumb for bounce rate is below 2%. Obviously, you need a 3rd party verification tool at minimum (we love neverbounce and Million verifier). If you validate your list with these tools, and only export the “valid” emails, this is usually enough to keep you in the 1-3% bounce or lower domain for most industries.

Sometimes, you begin to lose your list because…you don’t have that many valids. Another tool to help with this is Scrubby. We use them for our clients when there’s a larger amount of catch-alls on the list. This helps supplement the leads that are lost.

By verifying, this is usually enough, but just know that if you still have a high bounce rate (greater than 2%) for a long period of time, this will hurt you. If you feel like your campaigns are not performing well, and then see you’ve had a 10% bounce for 3 weeks…we gotta fix that first!

Tracking Volume Appropriately

This might seem weird, but the physical amount of emails you send is also a good indicator of deliverability. When reaching out low-volume, say 30-50 emails per day, there is statistically less data to even gather on your campaigns. If you send 200 emails, you really might only get 1-2 responses and both might be “Not interested.”

It’s not enough volume to answer these questions:

• Am I hitting the inbox?

• Are these leads my ICP?

• Do these leads care about what I’m saying?

Again, industry/offer makes volume a sliding scale, but generally speaking, if you can back up enough data in your campaign, more volume = faster testing and more precision. If you send 25,000 emails in 1 week and you have a .04% reply rate and no leads…we gotta talk.

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