When Authentic inherited Senate Majority PAC’s email program, we quickly realized that a significant portion of emails was not making it to supporter inboxes, with 74% being marked as spam. We knew that we needed to take immediate action to improve the program’s deliverability and increase the chances of emails reaching supporters. Our team worked with IP and spam-based blacklists to refresh SMP’s sender reputation, ensuring that emails were no longer automatically marked as spam.

We then implemented best practices and techniques for email deliverability, including optimizing the email content and subject lines, segmenting the email list, and regularly cleaning up the list to remove inactive subscribers. We also conducted A/B testing to determine the most effective time of day and day of the week to send emails.

The results of these efforts were clear: we were able to significantly reduce the bounce rate and increase the number of emails reaching supporters’ inboxes. Our open rates increased from single digits to industry-standard rates, and our click-through rates saw a dramatic improvement as well. As a result of these improvements, the SMP email program became a major piece of their fundraising infrastructure and remains so to this day.

To improve audience segments, we conducted a months-long warm-up process where we reintroduced SMP to its 1,000,000-person supporter base in small batches, gradually increasing subscribers to avoid the spam folder. We also recommended a slight rebrand from “Senate Majority PAC” to “Flip the Senate” to rebuild trust among previously-active supporters. These efforts helped us overcome the high bounce rate and spam issues and achieve higher open and click-through rates, making SMP’s email program a major fundraising vehicle for the organization.