Your email metrics tell an interesting story. Open rates look healthy — maybe 25%, maybe 35%, depending on your industry. People are seeing your emails. They're reading your subject lines and deciding to look inside.
But then nothing happens. Click-through rates are stuck at 1–2%. The landing page barely gets traffic. Conversions are a trickle. And the instinct — the one almost everyone has — is to blame the content. "Maybe we need better copy. Maybe a different offer. Maybe more compelling visuals."
Maybe. But probably not. In our experience managing email campaigns reaching hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the problem is almost always technical. And the good news is that technical problems have technical solutions.
The gap between opens and clicks
When someone opens your email but doesn't click, something in the experience broke down between the subject line and the call-to-action. Here's where it usually goes wrong:
Your emails are rendering badly
This is the number one culprit, and it's invisible to most senders. Email rendering is wildly inconsistent across clients. What looks perfect in your Gmail preview might be a disaster in Outlook on desktop, Apple Mail on iPhone, or Yahoo's web client. If your email layout breaks, buttons become untappable, or images don't load, nobody is clicking on anything.
The most common rendering issues we see:
- Broken responsive layout — The email doesn't adapt properly on mobile, making text tiny and buttons impossible to tap. More than 60% of email opens happen on mobile devices.
- Images blocked by default — Many email clients block images until the recipient actively enables them. If your email relies on images for key content or CTAs, those recipients see empty boxes.
- Outlook's rendering engine — Microsoft Outlook for desktop uses Word's rendering engine (yes, really), which doesn't support many modern CSS properties. If you haven't specifically tested and coded for Outlook, your layout is probably broken for a significant chunk of your audience.
- Dark mode inconsistencies — More users are viewing emails in dark mode, which can invert your colours, hide text, and make buttons disappear against dark backgrounds.
Your CTA is working against you
The call-to-action button (or link) is the entire point of most marketing emails. Yet we consistently see CTAs that are undermined by poor technical implementation:
- Buttons that aren't bulletproof — Image-based buttons disappear when images are blocked. The solution is "bulletproof buttons" built with HTML and CSS that render correctly everywhere.
- Too many competing links — Every additional link in your email dilutes the click probability. If you have 8 different things to click, most people will click none of them.
- Links that look like text — Especially on mobile, it needs to be immediately obvious what's clickable and what isn't. Underlined text links get lost. Big, contrasting buttons get clicked.
- Tap targets that are too small — On mobile, anything under 44x44 pixels is hard to tap accurately. If your CTA is small or tightly packed with other elements, mobile users will miss it or hit the wrong thing.
Deliverability issues you don't know about
Here's a scenario we see regularly: your overall open rate looks fine, but a significant portion of your list is never seeing your emails at all. Our email deliverability checklist covers the full diagnostic process. They're landing in spam folders, promotions tabs, or being filtered out entirely.
The "open rate" you see is calculated from the people who actually received the email in their inbox. It doesn't account for the emails that never arrived. So your 30% open rate might really be a 30% open rate on 70% of your list — meaning only 21% of your total subscribers are actually seeing your emails.
Common deliverability killers
- Missing or misconfigured authentication — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records tell email providers your emails are legitimate. Without them, you're fighting an uphill battle.
- Dirty lists — Bounced addresses, spam traps, and inactive subscribers actively damage your sender reputation. Regular list hygiene isn't optional.
- Inconsistent sending patterns — Going from 0 to 50,000 emails overnight triggers spam filters. Consistent, predictable sending volume builds trust.
- Heavy image-to-text ratio — Emails that are mostly images with minimal text look like spam to filtering algorithms.
- Link reputation — If you're linking to domains with poor reputation, or using link shorteners that are commonly abused, your emails get flagged.
Is email your biggest challenge? Our free assessment helps pinpoint exactly what your business needs — from deliverability fixes to full campaign strategy.
Find Your Solution →The technical foundation checklist
Before you rewrite a single subject line or redesign a single template, make sure these technical fundamentals are in place:
Email infrastructure
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are properly configured and passing
- Your sending domain has a healthy reputation (check with Google Postmaster Tools)
- You're using a dedicated sending IP or a shared IP with a reputable provider
- Bounce handling is automated and list hygiene is running regularly
Template quality
- Templates are tested across all major clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo, mobile)
- Responsive design works correctly on phones and tablets
- Dark mode has been tested and accounted for
- Images have proper alt text (both for accessibility and for image-blocked scenarios)
- CTAs use bulletproof buttons, not image-based buttons
- The email is readable and functional with images turned off
Campaign architecture
- Each email has a single, clear primary CTA
- The CTA button is large enough for mobile tap targets (minimum 44px height)
- The CTA appears above the fold (visible without scrolling)
- Landing pages load quickly and match the email's promise
- Tracking is properly configured so you can measure what's actually working
When it actually is the content
Once your technical foundation is solid, content does matter. But even here, the fixes are usually structural rather than creative:
Relevance beats cleverness. Segmented campaigns that send the right message to the right audience consistently outperform beautifully written emails sent to everyone. If your platform supports it (Pardot and Salesforce are excellent at this), invest in segmentation before you invest in copywriting.
Timing matters more than most people think. A/B test your send times. The difference between Tuesday at 10am and Thursday at 2pm can be dramatic — and it varies by audience.
Shorter is almost always better. The emails with the highest click-through rates in our experience are the ones that respect the reader's time. Get to the point. Make the value clear. Make the next step obvious.
The best email campaign in the world is worthless if the technical foundation can't deliver it properly to the people who need to see it.
Fix the foundation first. Then optimize the content. That's the order that actually moves metrics.