A drop in email engagement is often caused by a combination of inbox placement and recipient behavior.
Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo use automated filtering systems to decide where a message should appear, such as the Primary inbox, Promotions, or Spam. If an email is displayed in a less visible place, open and click rates often decline.
What can influence inbox placement?
Providers evaluate many signals, including:
- The email’s content and structure
- Design and formatting (how “promotional” it looks)
- Past recipient behavior (opens, clicks, replies, deletes, spam reports)
- Sender reputation signals (varies by provider)
Common reasons marketing emails get placed in Promotions
Emails are more likely to look promotional when they include:
- Image-heavy layouts
- Many links or repeated call-to-action sections
- Highly designed templates or newsletter-style formatting
- Promotional subject lines
- Longer, newsletter-style content
- Lower engagement from the audience over time
What you can do next
While no one can guarantee where an email will land, these steps often help improve visibility and engagement:
- Simplify the layout and reduce the “newsletter” feel
- Use fewer images and links
- Write more conversational, personal copy
- Keep emails shorter, or link to a webpage for longer content
- Use natural subject lines
- Send more often to your most engaged audience segments
If emails are going to spam
Review Why are my emails going to spam? for domain setup, sender-pool reputation, and list-quality checks. Lower engagement alone does not prove that messages are reaching spam.
When to contact Support
Contact Support if you need help choosing changes to test or engagement continues to decline. Include a recent subject line and email body, the audience or segment used, the sending date, and what changed compared with earlier sends. If a recipient reported Promotions or Spam placement, include that context.