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The Demotion of the Open Rate
By Cyndie Shaffstall | February 24, 2014
For years, marketers have been tracking open rates and using this stat for everything from choosing the best time to send to validating the deliverability of a particular email-automation vendor; and well, everything in between.
With more and more email being opened on mobile devices, Gmail caching images, and fewer recipients choosing to download images (perhaps accounting for as much as 40 percent of your audience), the open rate simply isn't what it used to be — not that it was ever all that accurate.
Charting a high open rate does not necessarily equate to clicks or conversions, but this has always been true. ..."
>>>Read the full article in Target Marketing
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Measuring open rates on email is problematic for marketers because the tracking mechanisms are not always able to function due to settings on email providers that block tracking, use of text only email, etc. However, there are sophisticated approaches to tracking that improve accuracy but it is still problematic.
Authoritative research that is representative gives some guidance on open rates. One of the best is from Mail Chimp.com. Using detailed figures reported there, the following averages were calculated:
|
Observed click rates, |
Open |
Soft |
Hard |
|
AVERAGE |
34.71% |
0.86% |
0.81% |
|
MIN |
19.30% |
0.20% |
0.10% |
|
MAX |
48.60% |
2.20% |
2.00% |
|
Median |
35.65% |
0.75% |
0.75% |
Source MailChimp 2012 Research – Read the full report: Email Marketing Benchmarks