Why Email Open Rates Alone Are a Misleading KPI
Key Takeaways
- Email open rate is useful, but it is not a complete measure of email marketing success.
- Open rates can be affected by privacy features, email clients, security systems, timing, subject lines, and deliverability.
- Click-through rate and click-to-open rate provide better insight into how subscribers engage with email content.
- Conversion rate connects email activity to actual business outcomes such as sales, bookings, and leads.
- Bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaint rate, and deliverability help measure overall list health.
Email marketing sounds basic. Send an email, get opens, get clicks, get sales. In essence, it can be that simple, but to get the most out of your email strategy, you need to take a peek under the hood and see what’s happening beyond your open rate.
It can be easy to think,
“My email open rate is good. That means my emails are doing their job.”
However, your email open rate only measures the first touchpoint. It can mean many things, from subject line strength to brand trust, but it doesn’t tell you how your content performed, whether or not it converted, or how healthy your list is.
What is An Email Open Rate?
By definition, an email open rate is the percentage of contacts who opened your email compared to the total number of contacts it was sent to.
Calculation
(Emails opened ÷ Emails delivered) × 100
Your email open rate will give you a very high-level understanding of how a specific campaign did, and once you’ve sent a couple of campaigns, you can start to see trends and make tweaks to improve.
It can indicate:
- How appealing your subject line is
- Whether your audience recognizes your brand
- If your targeting & timing are accurate
It doesn’t reliably measure:
- Account health & overall engagement
- Content performance
- Conversions
Are Email Open Rates Always Accurate?
Depending on your industry and subscriber base, your email open rate may be skewed by factors outside of your control. Open rate tracking depends on a tracking pixel, a small invisible image, that tracks an event when it loads. However, many email clients now block or pre-load tracking pixels, which can make your email open rate less accurate.
Common reasons open rates are inflated or inaccurate:
- Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) pre-loads images, creating false opens
- Some clients block images by default
- Some security systems scan emails and trigger opens artificially
What Impacts Your Email Open Rate?
Your email open rate is influenced by several factors. Each one plays a unique yet important role.
Subject Line
Your subject line is your reader’s first introduction to the campaign's content. If it doesn’t pique their interest, they are less likely to open your email. Using clear, relevant subject lines will boost performance, and don’t forget to A/B test when possible!
Sender Name
This is who the email campaign says it’s from. Your subscribers are much more likely to open your email when it comes from a name they trust. What you should put here depends on your brand and where the signup occurs. 9 times out of 10, this means using your business name. Only use your first & last name if your clients already know who you are; for example, a realtor or speaker may have name recognition among subscribers.
Timing
When your email lands in your subscriber’s inbox plays a bigger role in email open rates than most people realize, and it is extremely subjective to your list. Inboxes can be a busy place; if you send your campaign when your subscriber is not active, it can quickly become buried.
Audience Quality
How clean is your list? Are you still sending to subscribers from a decade ago who haven’t opened an email in years? It might be time to clean out some of your unengaged subscribers. Sending to a clean list will give you clean data. More subscribers doesn’t always equate to a better list.
Deliverability
Finally, the age-old question: are your emails getting caught up in the spam or promotional folders? Dealing with deliverability issues can be frustrating and confusing, and can stem from a few areas:
- Your domain: sending from free or unauthenticated domains (@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc.)
- Your content: using common spam trigger words (ex., cash bonus, free gift)
- Your reputation: continuously having a high bounce rate or spam complaint rate
- Your engagement: having overall low engagement on your campaigns
Deliverability can be a make-or-break part of your email open rate, and if you let it go too far, it can be hard to come back from. If you are experiencing deliverability issues, we always recommend working with a
reputable email marketing agency, such as CCC, to get you back on track.
What Other Email Marketing Metrics Should You Track?
If you’re ready to gain a real understanding of your email performance and start driving true value, you need to track much more than just the email open rate. You need to know both engagement metrics and list health metrics. Here’s what we suggest you track:
Email Engagement metrics
- Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
- Click-To-Open-Rate (CTOR)
- List Growth Rate
- Conversion Rate
List health metrics
- Deliverability Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Spam Complaint Rate
| Metric | What It Tells You | Why It Matters | Calculation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Click-Through-Rate (CTR) | The percentage of people who click a link in your email | Shows engagement with the email content | (Number of Unique Link Clicks / Number of Emails Delivered) x 100 |
| Click-To-Open-Rate (CTOR) | Compares the number of people who opened an email to the number who clicked on a link in that email | Helps evaluate content effectiveness | (Unique Clicks / Unique Opens) x 100 |
| List Growth Rate | The rate at which your list has grown over a set period | Signifies brand trust & interest | (New subs - unsubs (in a time period) / total recipients on list) x 100 |
| Conversion Rate | The percentage of people who took your desired action | Connects email to business results | (Total Conversions / Total Recipients) x 100 |
| Deliverability Rate | The percentage of emails that make it to your subscribers’ inboxes | Aids in identifying potential delivery problems. | (Total Emails Sent / Number of Emails Delivered) x 100 |
| Bounce Rate | The percentage of your emails which were deemed undeliverable | Indicates list and delivery health | (Number of Bounces / Total Emails Sent) x 100 |
| Unsubscribe Rate | The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your list after receiving the campaign | May signal issues with email frequency, relevance, or audience fit. | (Number of Unsubscribes / Total Emails Delivered) x 100 |
| Spam Complaint Rate | The percentage of emails that are flagged as spam after first hitting your subscribers’ inbox | Can be an important warning sign for sender reputation and deliverability | (Number of Spam Complaints / Total Emails Delivered) x 100 |
Set Yourself Up For Email Marketing Success
The 8 metrics outlined above are just the tip of the iceberg. They encompass the core areas you should monitor regularly, but there is so much more you can track. It all comes down to your goals, settings, and platform.
To get started with your email marketing journey:
- Set your goals
- Create a tracking dashboard, either in your email platform or externally
- Monitor performance regularly
- Tweak as needed, based on the data
- Bonus: Talk to an email marketing expert
Partner With an Award-Winning Email Marketing Agency
If you need help refining your email marketing tracking, setting up your account for success, or understanding the data you’ve collected, our team is here to support you. We’ve been awarded
top email marketing company in Alberta for multiple years for a reason. Our team of experts has the knowledge to help you reach the next level.
Book a free account review to get started.
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