Reading replies tells you how a seller acts when something goes wrong, which the star count never shows. A five star product with a seller who ignores you is worse than a three star one who fixes stuff fast. Maybe it's just me but I scroll straight to the worst reviews now to see if the company even bothered to respond.

Man, I totally get why that drop freaked you out and I used to roll my eyes at the whole "prune your list" advice too. I figured a big number was a big number and who cares if half of them never open anything, until I watched a friend go through the same thing you did and her open rate bounced back to 38% within two months. The thing is those dead contacts were never really reading your stuff anyway, so the 34% you had before was kinda fake when you break it down. Now every single person on your list is a real human who chose to be there, and that 22% will climb back up as new engaged folks join. Just gotta ride out the weird feeling of a smaller list for a bit.