Do Open Rates Really Matter?

What is the value of the open rate and what does it truly measure? Chris Wheeler, Bronto's Director of Deliverability, and I share our thoughts on the topic in the video below. In it, we review why open rates are a popular success metric for email marketing, the impact of opens on deliverability, and where we feel the industry should be moving toward when looking at open rates.

• Focus on long-term engagement with contacts and go beyond measuring success by open rates alone.
• Open rates are an unreliable metric - there are too many factors influencing the metric like image suppression and mobile devices.
• Provide quality content and maintain a quality, permission-based list to keep engagement metrics high, which will directly impact deliverability and inbox placement.
• Change mindset around priority of metrics from (1) Opens, (2) Clicks, (3) Conversions; to
  1. Action/Engagement
  2. Conversion
  3. Opens to properly measure success of your email program.
• Remember that opens are a means to an end - an open, by itself, doesn't make you money if it's not followed by an action.

Additional resources

• How opens are tracked and reported.
• Proposal to change "open rate" to "render rate" to accurately reflect what it measures.

What are your thoughts on open rates? How much stock do you and your business place on the metric?