Campaign Troubleshooting
Find your symptom below. Each section has a diagnosis flow, common causes, and specific fixes.
Where to Find Your Data
All campaign metrics are available in your drone’s dashboard.
| Metric | Where in Dashboard |
|---|---|
| Open rate | Campaign tab → select campaign → Opens |
| Reply rate | Campaign tab → Replies column |
| Bounce rate | Campaign tab → Bounced column |
| Unsubscribe requests | Campaign tab → Unsubscribed column |
| Meetings booked | Meetings tab (if calendar integration connected) |
| Per-email performance | Campaign tab → click a campaign → Email breakdown |
If a metric is missing, the relevant integration may not be connected. Bounce tracking requires Gmail or Instantly; meeting tracking requires a calendar integration.
Low Open Rates (<20%)
An open rate below 20% usually means emails are landing in spam, the subject line is being skipped, or the sender reputation has degraded.
Check your subject lines for spam triggers
Look at your last 10 subject lines. Avoid: words like “free”, “guaranteed”, “limited time”, “act now”, ALL CAPS, and excessive punctuation. Your drone filters these before sending, but rules you’ve set in your ICP or tone instructions may introduce them.
Check whether emails are landing in spam
Ask a colleague to search their spam folder for your sending domain. Send a test email from your connected Gmail account to a personal address and check if it routes to spam.
Check your sender reputation
If you recently scaled from 10 emails/day to 50+ overnight, Gmail may have flagged your account. Ramp volume gradually — increase by no more than 20–30% per week.
Check send timing
Emails sent on weekends or outside business hours (before 7am or after 8pm in the recipient’s timezone) have lower open rates. Your drone respects recipient working hours automatically, but verify your timezone settings are correct.
Common causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Spam trigger words in subject | Review subject line rules; see Designing Email Sequences |
| Emails routed to promotions tab | Use plain text formatting, no images or HTML-heavy templates |
| Sender reputation degraded | Reduce daily volume for 1 week; avoid large single-day spikes |
| Misleading Re:/Fwd: prefix | Remove false forward/reply prefixes from subjects |
| Subject line too long | Keep under 50 characters for mobile preview |
Low Reply Rates (<2%)
Opening without replying means your email is being read but not prompting action. The most common causes are weak personalization, wrong audience, or asking for too much too soon.
Diagnosis:
- Read the last 10 emails your drone sent. Would you reply to them? If they feel generic, the personalization hook is too shallow.
- Check whether emails reference something specific to the recipient — a recent company event, a post they wrote, a product they launched. “I noticed you’re the VP of Engineering at Acme” is not personalization.
- Review your ICP definition. If the people you’re reaching out to don’t have the problem you’re solving, no amount of copy improvement will move the number.
- Check the call to action. Asking for a 30-minute demo in the first email is too high-friction. Aim for a reply, a yes/no question, or a quick look at a link.
Common causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Generic opener (“Hope this finds you well”) | Require a specific personalization hook in your ICP brief; see Designing Email Sequences |
| Asking for a demo in email #1 | Use a soft CTA — reply, yes/no question, or a quick link |
| Wrong ICP — audience doesn’t feel the pain | Sharpen your ICP; see Defining Your ICP |
| Follow-ups say “just bumping this” | Every follow-up must add new value — case study, insight, new angle |
| Sequence stops after 1 email | Run 4–5 touches; most replies come on touch 2–4 |
High Bounce Rate (>5%)
A bounce rate above 5% damages your sender reputation and can get your Gmail account flagged. The cause is almost always unverified email addresses.
Check whether email verification is enabled
If you’re not using Apollo or Hunter for email verification, your drone is using web-scraped patterns that are accurate roughly 70% of the time. Connect Apollo for confidence-scored emails (~95% accuracy).
Remove role-based addresses from your list
Addresses like info@, contact@, support@, and hello@ bounce at high rates and are not suitable for cold outreach. Your drone filters these automatically when Apollo or Hunter is connected.
Check for stale lists
Leads more than 6–12 months old have significant address churn, especially at fast-growing companies. Re-verify old lists before sending.
Common causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| No email verification connected | Connect Apollo or Hunter |
| Role-based addresses in list | Enable role-address filtering in your drone’s settings |
| Stale lead list (6+ months old) | Re-run verification before reusing old lists |
| Disposable email domains | Your drone rejects these automatically; review how leads were sourced |
If your bounce rate exceeds 10%, stop the campaign immediately and do not increase volume. Send fewer emails from a clean, verified list before resuming. Repeated high-bounce sending can result in your Gmail account being suspended.
High Unsubscribe Rate (>2%)
An unsubscribe rate above 2% means you’re reaching people who don’t want to hear from you. This is almost always an ICP problem, not a copy problem.
Diagnosis:
- Look at who is unsubscribing. Are they in your defined ICP, or are they outside your target titles, company sizes, or industries?
- Check whether your value proposition matches the recipient’s actual role. A CFO unsubscribing from developer tool outreach is an ICP miss, not a deliverability issue.
- Review the tone and frequency. Outreach that feels pushy or sends more than one email within the same week without a trigger tends to generate unsubscribes.
Common causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Leads outside your ICP | Narrow your targeting criteria; see Defining Your ICP |
| Wrong title or seniority level | Focus on titles that own the problem you solve |
| Too many touches in too short a window | Space emails 3–5 days apart; your drone does this by default |
| Value prop doesn’t match recipient’s priorities | Rewrite your core message around a pain the recipient actually feels |
No Meetings Booked
If replies are coming in but no meetings are converting, the issue is usually in how your drone handles positive replies, or in the CTA itself.
Check how positive replies are being handled
Your drone classifies replies as interested, not interested, out-of-office, question, or bounced. When a reply is classified as interested, the next step is to suggest a meeting time. Check your drone’s reply log to confirm interested replies are receiving a calendar link or meeting suggestion.
Check your CTA
If your email asks prospects to “visit our website” or “check out our product”, some will do that and never reply. The CTA should drive a direct reply — a yes/no question or “open to a 15-minute call this week?” is more effective than a link.
Check whether a calendar integration is connected
Without a calendar integration, your drone can suggest meeting times but cannot automate booking. Connect Google Calendar or Calendly to close the loop.
Common causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Interested replies not receiving follow-up | Check reply classification in your drone’s activity log |
| CTA sends to a website instead of prompting a reply | Change CTA to a direct question or soft calendar ask |
| No calendar integration | Connect Google Calendar or Calendly in Integrations |
| Replies are questions, not interest | Address the question directly; ask for a meeting at the end |
| Asking for too much time | Ask for 15 minutes, not 30 or 60 |
Quick wins — the five fixes that most often move the needle:
- Add a real personalization hook to every email (not just their name and company).
- Shorten your emails to under 100 words.
- Connect Apollo or Hunter to reduce bounces below 3%.
- Change your CTA from a link to a yes/no question.
- Extend your sequence to at least 4 touches — most replies come on touch 2–4.
Next Steps
- Campaign Benchmarks — understand what good looks like before diagnosing
- Designing Email Sequences — improve opens and replies at the copy level
- Defining Your ICP — fix targeting problems at the root