The player is loading ...
In this episode, I explain why (generally) you shouldn't automatically resend newsletters to people who didn't open them, as this can impact privacy-driven tracking limits and the risk of lowering engagement metrics that affect inbox placement.
I offer practical exceptions: resending only for important promotions, or targeting non-openers who have engaged in the last 3–6 months, and tips for making sure you prioritize subscriber experience over blanket re-sends.
If you need extra newsletter help, check out my book Write Better Newsletters!
Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
WEBVTT
00:00:00.017 --> 00:00:03.297
Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
00:00:03.497 --> 00:00:06.877
I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips
00:00:06.877 --> 00:00:08.897
and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners.
00:00:09.557 --> 00:00:13.157
Today, I want to answer a question that was sent in, which is,
00:00:13.337 --> 00:00:19.017
does it make sense for me to resend my newsletter to people who didn't open it the first time?
00:00:19.277 --> 00:00:23.757
And I know most newsletter email service providers offer the option to do this.
00:00:24.077 --> 00:00:26.597
Usually it's just a click or two. It'll say, hey, do you want to resend this
00:00:26.597 --> 00:00:28.597
to people who didn't open it, etc.
00:00:28.877 --> 00:00:32.877
So they make it very easy to do this, which kind of implies that you should be doing it.
00:00:33.637 --> 00:00:38.297
So this question asker wanted to know, is that true? Should I actually be doing
00:00:38.297 --> 00:00:40.357
that? Does it make sense? Will I be bothering people?
00:00:40.657 --> 00:00:46.217
How should I think about this as an option if you are using your newsletter as a marketing tool?
00:00:46.537 --> 00:00:51.117
So here's the deal. There was a time back in the day when it did make sense
00:00:51.117 --> 00:00:54.497
to resend newsletters if somebody hadn't seen them.
00:00:54.817 --> 00:00:59.237
This was in a time when inboxes were a little bit less cluttered than they are today.
00:00:59.377 --> 00:01:04.517
We had a little bit of a different approach to our inboxes, and times were perhaps
00:01:04.517 --> 00:01:06.017
a little bit simpler in some ways.
00:01:06.737 --> 00:01:11.917
These days, it probably doesn't make sense most of the time to resend your newsletter
00:01:11.917 --> 00:01:15.837
if somebody didn't open it. There's a couple of reasons why.
00:01:16.317 --> 00:01:20.357
I'll go through a couple of them. Before I do, let me just remind you that I
00:01:20.357 --> 00:01:22.517
am not an email marketing expert. I'm not an email marketing.
00:01:23.174 --> 00:01:27.454
There may be more technical explanations for this, and I'm recording this in
00:01:27.454 --> 00:01:31.574
the middle of 2026. It's possible that the answer to this question will evolve
00:01:31.574 --> 00:01:32.914
and shift over the years.
00:01:33.054 --> 00:01:37.074
So in case you're listening to this in the future, go ahead and look it up for
00:01:37.074 --> 00:01:42.014
whatever moment of time you are in right now, because things change pretty rapidly over the years.
00:01:42.294 --> 00:01:48.694
Right. So for right now, though, generally speaking, the way that we track email
00:01:48.694 --> 00:01:53.874
openings and clicks and things like that is becoming slightly obscured by increased
00:01:53.874 --> 00:01:58.234
privacy settings in most email service providers. I think this is a great thing.
00:01:58.374 --> 00:02:02.494
It's very consumer-friendly. It's very email, you know, it's very friendly to
00:02:02.494 --> 00:02:04.834
the person whose email inbox you're appearing within.
00:02:05.174 --> 00:02:09.054
However, what it means is that the results, the statistics you're seeing on
00:02:09.054 --> 00:02:14.634
your end when you send an email newsletter may not be quite as accurate as they were before.
00:02:14.634 --> 00:02:19.234
So it is entirely possible that somebody did open and read your email,
00:02:19.474 --> 00:02:25.274
but your email service provider will not record that because they have privacy blocking system.
00:02:25.714 --> 00:02:29.674
This actually happens to me all the time. I have some pretty good privacy control
00:02:29.674 --> 00:02:32.454
set up in my personal and my business inboxes.
00:02:32.694 --> 00:02:37.314
And I will definitely get re-engagement campaigns. That's what they're called
00:02:37.314 --> 00:02:40.674
when you resend it to somebody who hasn't opened it. I will definitely get those,
00:02:40.794 --> 00:02:43.034
even though I did open and read the first email.
00:02:43.234 --> 00:02:46.254
I'll get that second one that's like, you know, they resend it clearly to people
00:02:46.254 --> 00:02:47.194
they think didn't open it.
00:02:47.454 --> 00:02:51.754
So first of all, you could be wrong. And it is a little bit irritating to get
00:02:51.754 --> 00:02:55.014
the same email twice, even if you change the subject line or whatnot.
00:02:55.334 --> 00:02:58.654
That's a minor irritation. The people that are opening your messages are probably
00:02:58.654 --> 00:03:01.874
not going to be so irritated by that that they unsubscribe. But it is a factor.
00:03:02.414 --> 00:03:06.394
We do want people to overall have a good experience with our messages.
00:03:06.394 --> 00:03:09.814
And it's, again, mildly irritating to get the same message twice.
00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:14.940
The other reason is because if you resend your message to people who didn't
00:03:14.940 --> 00:03:20.540
open it the first time, those are probably your least likely to be engaged subscribers.
00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:24.940
Some of them, yes, have great privacy settings, like I was talking about before.
00:03:25.220 --> 00:03:26.820
Some of them, for whatever reason,
00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:29.340
are just not in a place where they're opening your emails right now.
00:03:29.640 --> 00:03:33.600
Maybe they lost interest, maybe they're on vacation, maybe they're sick, whatever's going on.
00:03:34.040 --> 00:03:38.200
So what that means is the second time you send it, if you're only sending it
00:03:38.200 --> 00:03:41.660
to people who didn't open it the first time, or you think didn't open it the
00:03:41.660 --> 00:03:45.720
first time, your open rates and your click rates are going to be pretty low.
00:03:46.600 --> 00:03:49.760
Substantially lower usually than the first time you sent it when you had all
00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:54.680
your normal subscribers who do like and click and read your messages all the time.
00:03:54.920 --> 00:03:59.600
So that second message is going to have lower statistics in terms of how many
00:03:59.600 --> 00:04:02.240
people read it, how many people open it, click on it, and so forth.
00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:05.060
And that actually doesn't look good.
00:04:05.380 --> 00:04:12.140
The regular email inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo and whatever else people are using these days,
00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:16.720
the way that they decide who to filter into promotions and spam and wherever
00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:21.500
else they're putting it has more to do with these types of statistics,
00:04:21.500 --> 00:04:26.360
the low number of opens and clicks, than it does a lot of things.
00:04:26.360 --> 00:04:30.960
So we want to be really careful about sending messages to people that we don't
00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:32.940
think are going to open our messages.
00:04:33.460 --> 00:04:37.180
So for that reason, it really doesn't make sense to just automatically send
00:04:37.180 --> 00:04:41.140
all of your newsletters a second time to people who didn't see it the first time.
00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:46.700
I wouldn't recommend that at this point in time. What you might consider is
00:04:46.700 --> 00:04:50.220
if you are running a promotion of some sort and you really want.
00:04:50.812 --> 00:04:54.572
The message to land in people's inboxes, and you're really hoping that the maximum
00:04:54.572 --> 00:04:58.752
number of people will see what you have sent out, and you want,
00:04:58.812 --> 00:05:01.232
you know, inboxes are busy, I understand, being like, yeah, well,
00:05:01.312 --> 00:05:02.412
it probably just got bumped down,
00:05:02.752 --> 00:05:03.772
you know, maybe they just didn't
00:05:03.772 --> 00:05:06.832
have a chance to see it, it might be helpful to send it a second time.
00:05:07.192 --> 00:05:11.232
In that case, either just send a second email to everybody, if you really think that,
00:05:11.392 --> 00:05:16.812
or what you can do is send it to people who didn't open it, but filter by people
00:05:16.812 --> 00:05:20.692
who have opened or clicked on something from you in the last,
00:05:20.912 --> 00:05:22.532
say, three to six months.
00:05:22.712 --> 00:05:25.992
That way you're not sending it to people who haven't looked at anything from
00:05:25.992 --> 00:05:30.312
you in the last six years, but instead people who might be more likely to look at it.
00:05:30.512 --> 00:05:34.972
And again, I would only do that in cases where you feel pretty strongly that
00:05:34.972 --> 00:05:41.272
it would be important to you that this particular message gets opened by the most number of people.
00:05:41.873 --> 00:05:46.573
I actually don't personally do that, but if you really felt like you wanted
00:05:46.573 --> 00:05:51.733
to, those are really the circumstances that I would consider resending an email for the second time.
00:05:51.933 --> 00:05:56.993
So in summary, generally speaking, as an automated rule, I would not recommend
00:05:56.993 --> 00:06:01.973
resending your newsletter to everybody who didn't open it the first time for
00:06:01.973 --> 00:06:03.113
the reasons that we already mentioned.
00:06:03.633 --> 00:06:07.053
Okay, I hope that helps. I really appreciate the question. If you have a question
00:06:07.053 --> 00:06:11.233
you would like me to answer here, whether it's a clinical topic or a question
00:06:11.233 --> 00:06:16.233
that's been on your mind about business, marketing, sales, anything like that, running a practice,
00:06:16.953 --> 00:06:19.653
time management, please feel free to send it in.
00:06:19.753 --> 00:06:24.393
I would love to answer your question here and I know it helps other people when
00:06:24.393 --> 00:06:27.893
you can hear the answers that, you know, the questions people are asking and
00:06:27.893 --> 00:06:29.613
the answers that come in from that.
00:06:29.973 --> 00:06:33.673
All right, so let's wrap that up. Thank you, as always, for listening.
00:06:33.913 --> 00:06:37.073
If you would like to stay in touch, I would love to have you on my practitioner
00:06:37.073 --> 00:06:38.413
notes email newsletter.
00:06:38.633 --> 00:06:42.793
I send out a message every Thursday. It's got little tips and tidbits.
00:06:43.153 --> 00:06:47.193
Again, for practitioners, I usually share three recommendations of things that
00:06:47.193 --> 00:06:51.733
I have appreciated or enjoyed that week that might include books or recipes
00:06:51.733 --> 00:06:56.593
or tools, anything that's on my mind that I think might be helpful for you as well.
00:06:56.593 --> 00:07:01.213
So you can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com.
00:07:01.333 --> 00:07:04.273
Either one of those have an email sign up right there on the homepage.
00:07:04.613 --> 00:07:07.253
So I'd love to see you on Thursday when I send out my next message.
00:07:07.633 --> 00:07:09.913
Otherwise, have a great week, and I will be back soon.
00:00:00.017 --> 00:00:03.297
Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
00:00:03.497 --> 00:00:06.877
I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips
00:00:06.877 --> 00:00:08.897
and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners.
00:00:09.557 --> 00:00:13.157
Today, I want to answer a question that was sent in, which is,
00:00:13.337 --> 00:00:19.017
does it make sense for me to resend my newsletter to people who didn't open it the first time?
00:00:19.277 --> 00:00:23.757
And I know most newsletter email service providers offer the option to do this.
00:00:24.077 --> 00:00:26.597
Usually it's just a click or two. It'll say, hey, do you want to resend this
00:00:26.597 --> 00:00:28.597
to people who didn't open it, etc.
00:00:28.877 --> 00:00:32.877
So they make it very easy to do this, which kind of implies that you should be doing it.
00:00:33.637 --> 00:00:38.297
So this question asker wanted to know, is that true? Should I actually be doing
00:00:38.297 --> 00:00:40.357
that? Does it make sense? Will I be bothering people?
00:00:40.657 --> 00:00:46.217
How should I think about this as an option if you are using your newsletter as a marketing tool?
00:00:46.537 --> 00:00:51.117
So here's the deal. There was a time back in the day when it did make sense
00:00:51.117 --> 00:00:54.497
to resend newsletters if somebody hadn't seen them.
00:00:54.817 --> 00:00:59.237
This was in a time when inboxes were a little bit less cluttered than they are today.
00:00:59.377 --> 00:01:04.517
We had a little bit of a different approach to our inboxes, and times were perhaps
00:01:04.517 --> 00:01:06.017
a little bit simpler in some ways.
00:01:06.737 --> 00:01:11.917
These days, it probably doesn't make sense most of the time to resend your newsletter
00:01:11.917 --> 00:01:15.837
if somebody didn't open it. There's a couple of reasons why.
00:01:16.317 --> 00:01:20.357
I'll go through a couple of them. Before I do, let me just remind you that I
00:01:20.357 --> 00:01:22.517
am not an email marketing expert. I'm not an email marketing.
00:01:23.174 --> 00:01:27.454
There may be more technical explanations for this, and I'm recording this in
00:01:27.454 --> 00:01:31.574
the middle of 2026. It's possible that the answer to this question will evolve
00:01:31.574 --> 00:01:32.914
and shift over the years.
00:01:33.054 --> 00:01:37.074
So in case you're listening to this in the future, go ahead and look it up for
00:01:37.074 --> 00:01:42.014
whatever moment of time you are in right now, because things change pretty rapidly over the years.
00:01:42.294 --> 00:01:48.694
Right. So for right now, though, generally speaking, the way that we track email
00:01:48.694 --> 00:01:53.874
openings and clicks and things like that is becoming slightly obscured by increased
00:01:53.874 --> 00:01:58.234
privacy settings in most email service providers. I think this is a great thing.
00:01:58.374 --> 00:02:02.494
It's very consumer-friendly. It's very email, you know, it's very friendly to
00:02:02.494 --> 00:02:04.834
the person whose email inbox you're appearing within.
00:02:05.174 --> 00:02:09.054
However, what it means is that the results, the statistics you're seeing on
00:02:09.054 --> 00:02:14.634
your end when you send an email newsletter may not be quite as accurate as they were before.
00:02:14.634 --> 00:02:19.234
So it is entirely possible that somebody did open and read your email,
00:02:19.474 --> 00:02:25.274
but your email service provider will not record that because they have privacy blocking system.
00:02:25.714 --> 00:02:29.674
This actually happens to me all the time. I have some pretty good privacy control
00:02:29.674 --> 00:02:32.454
set up in my personal and my business inboxes.
00:02:32.694 --> 00:02:37.314
And I will definitely get re-engagement campaigns. That's what they're called
00:02:37.314 --> 00:02:40.674
when you resend it to somebody who hasn't opened it. I will definitely get those,
00:02:40.794 --> 00:02:43.034
even though I did open and read the first email.
00:02:43.234 --> 00:02:46.254
I'll get that second one that's like, you know, they resend it clearly to people
00:02:46.254 --> 00:02:47.194
they think didn't open it.
00:02:47.454 --> 00:02:51.754
So first of all, you could be wrong. And it is a little bit irritating to get
00:02:51.754 --> 00:02:55.014
the same email twice, even if you change the subject line or whatnot.
00:02:55.334 --> 00:02:58.654
That's a minor irritation. The people that are opening your messages are probably
00:02:58.654 --> 00:03:01.874
not going to be so irritated by that that they unsubscribe. But it is a factor.
00:03:02.414 --> 00:03:06.394
We do want people to overall have a good experience with our messages.
00:03:06.394 --> 00:03:09.814
And it's, again, mildly irritating to get the same message twice.
00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:14.940
The other reason is because if you resend your message to people who didn't
00:03:14.940 --> 00:03:20.540
open it the first time, those are probably your least likely to be engaged subscribers.
00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:24.940
Some of them, yes, have great privacy settings, like I was talking about before.
00:03:25.220 --> 00:03:26.820
Some of them, for whatever reason,
00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:29.340
are just not in a place where they're opening your emails right now.
00:03:29.640 --> 00:03:33.600
Maybe they lost interest, maybe they're on vacation, maybe they're sick, whatever's going on.
00:03:34.040 --> 00:03:38.200
So what that means is the second time you send it, if you're only sending it
00:03:38.200 --> 00:03:41.660
to people who didn't open it the first time, or you think didn't open it the
00:03:41.660 --> 00:03:45.720
first time, your open rates and your click rates are going to be pretty low.
00:03:46.600 --> 00:03:49.760
Substantially lower usually than the first time you sent it when you had all
00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:54.680
your normal subscribers who do like and click and read your messages all the time.
00:03:54.920 --> 00:03:59.600
So that second message is going to have lower statistics in terms of how many
00:03:59.600 --> 00:04:02.240
people read it, how many people open it, click on it, and so forth.
00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:05.060
And that actually doesn't look good.
00:04:05.380 --> 00:04:12.140
The regular email inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo and whatever else people are using these days,
00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:16.720
the way that they decide who to filter into promotions and spam and wherever
00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:21.500
else they're putting it has more to do with these types of statistics,
00:04:21.500 --> 00:04:26.360
the low number of opens and clicks, than it does a lot of things.
00:04:26.360 --> 00:04:30.960
So we want to be really careful about sending messages to people that we don't
00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:32.940
think are going to open our messages.
00:04:33.460 --> 00:04:37.180
So for that reason, it really doesn't make sense to just automatically send
00:04:37.180 --> 00:04:41.140
all of your newsletters a second time to people who didn't see it the first time.
00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:46.700
I wouldn't recommend that at this point in time. What you might consider is
00:04:46.700 --> 00:04:50.220
if you are running a promotion of some sort and you really want.
00:04:50.812 --> 00:04:54.572
The message to land in people's inboxes, and you're really hoping that the maximum
00:04:54.572 --> 00:04:58.752
number of people will see what you have sent out, and you want,
00:04:58.812 --> 00:05:01.232
you know, inboxes are busy, I understand, being like, yeah, well,
00:05:01.312 --> 00:05:02.412
it probably just got bumped down,
00:05:02.752 --> 00:05:03.772
you know, maybe they just didn't
00:05:03.772 --> 00:05:06.832
have a chance to see it, it might be helpful to send it a second time.
00:05:07.192 --> 00:05:11.232
In that case, either just send a second email to everybody, if you really think that,
00:05:11.392 --> 00:05:16.812
or what you can do is send it to people who didn't open it, but filter by people
00:05:16.812 --> 00:05:20.692
who have opened or clicked on something from you in the last,
00:05:20.912 --> 00:05:22.532
say, three to six months.
00:05:22.712 --> 00:05:25.992
That way you're not sending it to people who haven't looked at anything from
00:05:25.992 --> 00:05:30.312
you in the last six years, but instead people who might be more likely to look at it.
00:05:30.512 --> 00:05:34.972
And again, I would only do that in cases where you feel pretty strongly that
00:05:34.972 --> 00:05:41.272
it would be important to you that this particular message gets opened by the most number of people.
00:05:41.873 --> 00:05:46.573
I actually don't personally do that, but if you really felt like you wanted
00:05:46.573 --> 00:05:51.733
to, those are really the circumstances that I would consider resending an email for the second time.
00:05:51.933 --> 00:05:56.993
So in summary, generally speaking, as an automated rule, I would not recommend
00:05:56.993 --> 00:06:01.973
resending your newsletter to everybody who didn't open it the first time for
00:06:01.973 --> 00:06:03.113
the reasons that we already mentioned.
00:06:03.633 --> 00:06:07.053
Okay, I hope that helps. I really appreciate the question. If you have a question
00:06:07.053 --> 00:06:11.233
you would like me to answer here, whether it's a clinical topic or a question
00:06:11.233 --> 00:06:16.233
that's been on your mind about business, marketing, sales, anything like that, running a practice,
00:06:16.953 --> 00:06:19.653
time management, please feel free to send it in.
00:06:19.753 --> 00:06:24.393
I would love to answer your question here and I know it helps other people when
00:06:24.393 --> 00:06:27.893
you can hear the answers that, you know, the questions people are asking and
00:06:27.893 --> 00:06:29.613
the answers that come in from that.
00:06:29.973 --> 00:06:33.673
All right, so let's wrap that up. Thank you, as always, for listening.
00:06:33.913 --> 00:06:37.073
If you would like to stay in touch, I would love to have you on my practitioner
00:06:37.073 --> 00:06:38.413
notes email newsletter.
00:06:38.633 --> 00:06:42.793
I send out a message every Thursday. It's got little tips and tidbits.
00:06:43.153 --> 00:06:47.193
Again, for practitioners, I usually share three recommendations of things that
00:06:47.193 --> 00:06:51.733
I have appreciated or enjoyed that week that might include books or recipes
00:06:51.733 --> 00:06:56.593
or tools, anything that's on my mind that I think might be helpful for you as well.
00:06:56.593 --> 00:07:01.213
So you can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com.
00:07:01.333 --> 00:07:04.273
Either one of those have an email sign up right there on the homepage.
00:07:04.613 --> 00:07:07.253
So I'd love to see you on Thursday when I send out my next message.
00:07:07.633 --> 00:07:09.913
Otherwise, have a great week, and I will be back soon.