The anatomy of a deliverability comeback

When open rates tank, it’s easy to blame a weak subject line, poor timing, or uninspired copy.

But sometimes, it’s not your message at all. It’s your sender reputation.

That’s what Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) discovered when Gmail engagement suddenly plummeted — from 37% open rates in late 2023 to just 14% by spring 2024.

Revenue slipped, and once-reliable campaigns started landing in spam.

The culprit: declining sender reputation.

Rather than scramble with one-off fixes, RIF worked with Lautman Maska Neill & Company to rebuild its entire program from the ground up.

Case study: Reading is Fundamental’s deliverability reset
At the 2025 Bridge Conference, Laura Rahman (RIF) and Lindsey Twombly (Lautman Maska Neill & Company) shared how they rebuilt RIF’s sender reputation.

Their first move: get everyone on board. Deliverability became a shared priority across teams.

Once aligned, they went back to basics:

Getting tech right. They audited authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and confirmed a clean, consistent sending setup.

Cleaning the list. Validation revealed that more than a third of addresses were invalid, risky, or inactive — and those were promptly removed.

Redefining “active.” They rebuilt segmentation around engagement, sending more to clickers and donors while slowing cadence for unengaged subscribers.

Then came the recovery sprint: a six-week, 150-email re-engagement series, rolled out to nearly half a million subscribers in carefully throttled batches. The goal wasn’t volume — it was trust.

Each round started with the warmest segment, slowly scaling up as engagement improved. Non-Google inboxes recovered first; Gmail took longer but eventually stabilized.

A year later, open rates and revenue were steady again, and RIF had a system in place to monitor deliverability across every domain.

How to protect your deliverability before it dips
If you haven’t experienced a major deliverability issue yet, consider this your warning — and your playbook:

Share the responsibility. Deliverability isn’t just for digital staff. Data quality, opt-in methods, and donor communications all influence reputation.

Practice good list hygiene. Validate new signups, remove inactive addresses, and make unsubscribing simple. Quality beats quantity.

Monitor by domain. Look at open rates and bounces by provider. Drops isolated to Gmail or Yahoo are early red flags.

Engage your file regularly. Inactivity hurts more than unsubscribes. Keep your audience clicking with engaging content, even between big campaigns.

Plan a re-engagement flow. A series of warm, clickable emails — not a single blast — will reawaken dormant subscribers without tanking your metrics.

The bottom line
Deliverability is a trust metric. Once you lose it, it takes time, consistency, and collaboration to earn it back.

Don’t wait until your engagement signals crash to start caring about deliverability. Build good habits now, and your success will follow.

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'Til next time!
Sara

P.S. Looking to add donors to your email list before year-end comes knocking? See how Civic Shout can help.