Ashton Real Estate Group
Email engagement had plateaued despite solid deliverability fundamentals. We implemented engagement-based sunsetting and audience management that doubled open rates and restored domain reputation to High — while sending 20% fewer emails
The Ashton Real Estate Group, operating under the domain nashvillerealestate.com, partnered with SH Consulting to improve its overall email deliverability and strengthen its sender reputation with major mailbox providers.
While The Ashton Real Estate Group had historically achieved above-average deliverability performance, the team wanted to maximize open and click rates, build long-term trust with mailbox providers, and ensure consistent inbox placement across all mail streams.
When the engagement began, The Ashton Real Estate Groupʼs SendGrid and Mandrill accounts were fully operational, but engagement metrics revealed a performance plateau.
Despite solid deliverability fundamentals, deeper analysis showed a large portion of the database-tens of thousands of leads-had not opened or clicked an email in over three months. These inactive contacts were dragging down overall engagement rates, signaling to mailbox providers that Nashvilleʼs email may not be relevant to its recipients.
This kind of “silent disengagementˮ is one of the most common contributors to declining sender reputation, often resulting in reduced inbox placement and lower ROI from email campaigns.
SH Consulting began by connecting The Ashton Real Estate Groupʼs Mandrill and SendGrid accounts to our proprietary deliverability analytics platform, allowing for precise, real-time tracking of key deliverability metrics such as:
Delivery and block rates
Unique and total open rates
Click rates
Spam complaints and bounce trends
Once sufficient data was collected, we conducted a detailed deliverability assessment, comparing actual engagement patterns with industry benchmarks.
Our analysis confirmed that the inactive segment was significantly affecting sender reputation. To counter this, we implemented an engagement-based sunsetting policy-temporarily pausing email to unengaged leads to allow the sender reputation to recover.
Immediate Impact
Within days of implementing the sunsetting strategy, engagement metrics improved dramatically:
Open Rate Before and After
Unique open rates rose from ~23% to 45%
Click Rate Before and After
Click rates increased from 1.5% to over 3%
These improvements sent strong positive signals to mailbox providers, triggering visible gains in reputation and inbox placement.
Reputation Recovery
Within weeks:
Domain Reputation
Google Postmaster Tools showed domain reputation improving from Medium → High
IP Reputation
IP reputation improved from a mix of Bad/Medium → almost exclusively High
With these signals in place, emails consistently reached primary inboxes across Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
Long-Term Gains
Once a strong reputation was established, SH Consulting gradually began reintroducing older, less-engaged leads in controlled segments.
Weekly unique opens increased by more than 10% week-over-week
The Ashton Real Estate Group achieved morethan 2,000 additional weekly openers
Total unique opens for The Ashton Real Estate Group emails increased by more than 20%
The Ashton Real Estate Group achieved this growth while sending 20% fewer emails than before
This outcome demonstrates that when it comes to deliverability, sending smarter beats sending more.
Through careful audience management, ongoing monitoring, and evidence-based decision-making, The Ashton Real Estate Group transformed its email performance.
They now maintain a High domain and IP reputation, strong engagement metrics, and aleaner, more efficient email strategy that drives better outcomes with less effort.
This stable foundation will support continued growth and experimentation-allowing The Ashton Real Estate Group to confidently expand its campaigns, re-engagement programs, and marketing automations without fear of deliverability setbacks
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