Open rates · Community F.I.R.E. Mojo

Open rates

Hey

I’m running into a friction point applying this no-upfront, revenue-share style model to email marketing, and I wanted to get your take on how you would think about it.

Here’s the issue:

Most businesses I see have completely neglected email.

They send occasional campaigns, their list is half-dead, and open rates are usually sitting around 5% to 10%, sometimes even worse.

So finding a partner with a healthy, properly activated email list is rare.

Now, I do know how to rehabilitate lists.

I can repair the setup, improve deliverability, reactivate the database, raise open rates, and turn email into a meaningful revenue channel again.

But that process usually takes anywhere from 30 to 90 days.

That’s where I’m getting stuck.

I don’t think it’s reasonable for me to fully absorb

all the cost, time, and effort of that rehabilitation work upfront under a pure performance deal, especially when the channel is basically broken when I come in.

So my question is:

How do you and your team think about partnerships when the asset is underperforming that badly from day one?

Do you have a qualification threshold?

For example, do you look at something like:

minimum open rates

list size

recent sending activity

offer quality

sales process / close rate

average order value or LTV

And if the email list is clearly neglected but still has potential — say 100,000 subscribers but very low engagement — would you still consider that a partnership deal?

Or would you charge something upfront first to rehabilitate the list before moving into a rev-share structure?

I’d really love to understand how you draw that line

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