What Does The Open Rate Mean In Email Marketing?

I had this question come up twice this week so I thought i’d write a post to explain exactly what Open Rate means when it comes in Email Marketing.

What is Open Rate?

When you send out an email via an email marketing service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, they provide alot of great analytical data so that you can track what happens with each email you send. One of the metrics that they track is the email’s Open Rate. The Open Rate is exactly that, how many people opened the email as a percentage of the number of emails that you sent out.

How do they track the Open Rate?

The open rate is typically tracked by adding a very tiny and transparent graphic (pixel) in the email message that you send. When a reader clicks to open the email, the graphic is downloaded from the email marketing firm’s server, thus registering an “Open” for the person that opened the email.

Is the Open Rate accurate?

Kind of. There are two things that need to happen in order for this graphic (pixel) to get downloaded and to register an Open.

#1 The email needs to be sent via an html email and not a plain text email. You cannot embed a graphic in a plain text email, so you would need to send an html email in order to properly track your open rate.

#2 On the recipient’s computer or phone, graphics need to turned on in order for the tracking image to be downloaded. Many email services like Gmail, have images turned off for new email contacts by default, you have to click a button stating that you want to accept images from a particular recipient. Many smart phones also have images turned off by default when viewing email on a phone.

If one or both of the above happen, your email marketing provider will not be able to accurately track your email’s Open rate.

Is there an alternative for tracking Open Rates?

Many email marketers don’t use the Open Rate as an accurate measure of the success of an email, for reasons listed above. The metric that many email marketers like to measure is the Click Through Rate of an email.

What is Click Through Rate?

When you have a link in your email that users can click on, if someone clicks on that link, that person is recorded as clicking through to whatever you were linking to in your email. You can have as many links as you want in a email and your Email Marketing Service can track how many people clicked on each link.

Many Email Marketers use the Click Through Rate as a better indicator of the success of an email as it can be more accurately tracked than the Open Rate, which has some limitations. It’s also proof that your email got past the initial curiosity of the reader through your email subject headline (the Open Rate) and engaged them enough so that they continued further by clicking on whatever links you had in your email (the Click Through Rate).

So what can you do?

Add links to your emails that take readers to a page (hopefully on your website) to learn more about whatever you were linking to in your email. Make sure the link is clickable and that you have enabled click tracking on your email campaign.
Add calls to action or offer a free download in your email and track how many people click through that link.
Don’t get discouraged if your open rate is low, it may be higher than you think. Track your Open rates, Click Through rates and other metrics to get a total feel on the success of your email campaign.

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Gary Shouldis

Chief Marketer at 3Bug Media

Gary Shouldis is a father, husband, business owner and blogger. He is the founder of 3Bug Media , a web marketing company that helps small business owners and service professionals get found online. You can give him a virtual high five over at Twitter or on Google Plus