Email campaign open rate statistic is not a good measure of success
Email open rate statistic is widely used as a credible measurable quantifier of success of email marketing campaigns. However, its significance nowadays should be disputed as it represents only a partial outlook on the recipient engagement with an email.
Firstly, email open rate is usually calculated by the amount of requests for a 1×1px transparent GIF image. This means that if a recipient is reading a text version of your email (say, on a Blackberry) or previews the content of the email in an a preview pane of an email client that blocks remote images by default, an open isn’t going to register. There are ways of tracking open rates of text email, but I wouldn’t recommend them.
Secondly, even if the transparent image is requested and an open is registered, nothing tells you about the engagement of the recipient with your email. Open rate doesn’t tell you how well the recipients perceived the email – whether they actually scrolled below the fold or pressed the ‘Delete’ key as soon as they saw the header.
So what can be used to measure the initial success of the email campaign, the recipients’ engagement and active interaction with the creative?
Start with a click-through rate (CTR). They are one of the first real statistics that could be taken into account while benchmarking the performance of an email creative (I am not taking into account delivery statistics – bounces, etc.). CTR measures engagement of recipients with the creative and the success of offers in the email. It can also be argued that the higher the CTR is closer to the footer, the better the email was perceived, it was more targeted and contained engaging content.
To sum it up, email open rate is a statistical by-product that should be mostly be taken into account when benchmarking HTML email rendering and to make assumptions on how many people rendered the HTML part of your creative successfully. If you wish to measure engagement with the creative, and ultimately the direct impact of the email marketing campaign on sales, better leave open rate out of the equation.
