my email open rates and clicks basically collapsed over the last few days and i swear i did not change anything. same list, same sending domain, same content style. suddenly a big chunk is going to spam or just not landing at one of the big mailbox providers.
where do i even start debugging this. is it a reputation thing that built up slowly and just tipped over, is it an auth issue, is it the list going stale. feels like im flying blind and the revenue from the sends is the thing paying my bills so im a little panicked.
first check your auth is still passing, spf dkim dmarc, because a silent dns change or an expired key will tank you overnight and it happens more than youd think. then look at the specific provider, if its one mailbox provider hurting and the rest are fine thats a reputation signal with that one provider, not a global problem. narrow it down before you panic.
the you changed nothing but it collapsed pattern is usually reputation tipping over after a slow build, like dana said. one trigger people miss, a batch of spam complaints or a spike in sends to dead addresses. if you recently mailed a cold or old segment you reactivated, that can poison the whole sending reputation even though the template looked the same. check if a specific campaign lines up with the drop.
pull your bounce and complaint numbers for the last two weeks and look for the day it turned. that date tells you most of the story. also if youre on a shared ip with your esp, a neighbor could have torched the pool and youre collateral. worth asking them if youre on dedicated or shared because that changes what you can even do about it.
while youre fixing the root cause, pull back your volume hard for a few days and only mail your most engaged openers. keep sending to the dead weight and you dig the hole deeper. a smaller clean send to people who actually open rebuilds the signal faster than anything, then you widen back out slowly once it recovers.
this exact thing happened to me and it was a stale reengagement blast i sent to a segment i hadnt touched in months. the complaints spiked and it dragged the good sends down with it. lesson i took, never bulk reactivate old addresses, trickle them in small and watch the complaint rate like a hawk.
update, it was auth after all. a dns migration on my end a couple weeks ago dropped one of my dkim records and i never noticed because the other selector was still signing. fixed it, pulled volume back to engaged only like sasha said, and its slowly climbing back. thank you all, i was genuinely spiraling.