AskMeAnything
Ask
Ask
302
@starschema_sy ·

newsletter opens fell from 44% to 18% after moving to my own sending domain Newsletter

Same list of 2,140 subscribers, same weekly issue, same ESP, no change to the copy. I moved the From address off the ESP subdomain onto [email protected] because owning it felt like the grown-up thing to do. Next send: opens 44.1% -> 18.4%, and two people replied from other addresses to say it landed in spam.

Headers from a delivered copy are in the image. SPF passes. DKIM says none. I did also add a DMARC record that same week because a setup guide told me to.

Is it the DMARC record, is it the new domain having no reputation, or have I broken something else?

8 answers Share
Report

8 answers

BestTopNewOldControversial

Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

  • @two_week_notice · last wk. · 3 replies
    @two_week_notice ·

    It is the DMARC record, but only because you never published DKIM. You went from "unaligned and nobody was checking" to "unaligned and you explicitly asked every mailbox provider to reject it".

    Walk the header you posted:

    • dkim=none because the CNAMEs your ESP handed you were never added to DNS.
    • Return-Path is on the ESP's bounce domain, so SPF passes but does not align with mydomain.dev.
    • DMARC needs SPF or DKIM to pass and align. Neither does. You published p=reject. Gmail did what you asked.

    Order of operations:

    1. Add the DKIM CNAMEs, wait for the ESP to show verified, send yourself one and confirm the header says dkim=pass header.d=mydomain.dev.
    2. Set a custom bounce/return-path subdomain, usually mail.mydomain.dev, so SPF aligns too.
    3. Drop DMARC back to p=none with a rua= address, read a fortnight of reports, then p=quarantine, then p=reject once the reports are boring.

    Your open rate never fell. Your delivery location moved.

    244
    Share
    Reply

    Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

    Report
    • @starschema_sy · 2w ago
      @starschema_sy OP ·

      That is grim and obvious in hindsight. Once DKIM is in, do I need to warm the domain up slowly, or can I just send the next issue to all 2,140?

      63
      Share
      Reply

      Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

      Report
    • @two_week_notice · 2w ago
      @two_week_notice ·

      2,140 is small enough that formal warm-up is overkill, but do not send the first clean issue to the whole list. Take the 400 people who opened the last three issues, send to them, and let the engagement land first. Then everyone else the following week. The domain has no history, so the first signals it gets should be your best ones.

      79
      Share
      Reply

      Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

      Report
  • @film_fridge · 2w ago
    @film_fridge ·

    Separate from the DMARC mistake, the new domain genuinely has no sending reputation, and that is worth two or three weeks even when the auth is perfect. Expect the recovery to look like 18 -> 27 -> 35 -> back to normal rather than a step change the moment you fix DNS. People panic in week two and change three more things at once, which makes it impossible to tell what worked.

    96
    Share
    Reply

    Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

    Report
  • @printbed_gremlin · last wk. · 2 replies
    @printbed_gremlin ·

    Before diagnosing anything else, sanity check how you measure opens at all. A big share of Apple Mail traffic prefetches the tracking pixel, so your 44% baseline was partly inflated by machines. It is still a real drop, just make sure you are comparing the same mixture of clients rather than a change in who happens to be reading on what.

    54
    Share
    Reply

    Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

    Report
    • @starschema_sy · 2w ago
      @starschema_sy OP ·

      Fair, though the two spam reports are not a measurement artefact. Clicks fell from 6.2% to 2.1% in the same send, which is harder to explain away.

      27
      Share
      Reply

      Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

      Report
  • @shoe_resole · last wk.
    @shoe_resole ·

    One more thing to fix while you are in DNS: send from a subdomain, not the root. mail.mydomain.dev or news.mydomain.dev. If a campaign ever goes badly you want the damage contained to that subdomain rather than to the domain your invoices and password resets go out from.

    37
    Share
    Reply

    Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

    Report
  • @pivot_pilot · 2w ago
    @pivot_pilot ·

    "A setup guide told me to add p=reject" is going to haunt a lot of people this year.

    12
    Share
    Reply

    Answering anonymously — a moderator will review it first.

    Report