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I saw a 40% drop in email open rates after I stopped personalizing subject lines

I had a client in Chicago who was seeing steady 22% open rates on their B2B newsletter for about six months. Then I got lazy and used generic subject lines for a whole quarter... the rate tanked to 13% almost overnight. Turns out their audience hated vague stuff like "March Newsletter" and responded way better to something specific like "Q1 results for [Company Name]". I switched back to personalized subject lines using their industry keywords and it climbed back to 19% in three weeks. Has anyone else seen a big swing just from changing up how you write the subject line?
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blair_green
Laughing at @benlewis while my open rates are crying in the corner over here lol
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benlewis
benlewis18d ago
Hold on, I actually saw the opposite - I stopped personalizing subject lines for my small ecommerce list and my open rates went up by 8% because the generic ones felt less spammy and more like a normal email from a friend.
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