For years, email open rates were treated like gospel. If they were high, your campaign was a success. If not, take it as a cue to adjust the approach.
But the truth is, open rates were never perfect to begin with.
An “open” doesn’t always mean a user saw or engaged with your email. High open rates guarantee nothing noteworthy in terms of conversion or sales.
Let’s dig into why email open rates are becoming less relevant and which KPIs truly reflect campaign performance today.
Why Open Rates Are Becoming a Less Accurate Metric For Email Marketing
Open rates were once the gold standard metric for email marketers. But today? They’re closer to a rough guess than a reliable KPI.
Here are six key reasons why the open rate is no longer the trustworthy indicator it once was:
1. Privacy Features Are Inflating Opens
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) started it, and others followed. These privacy tools pre-load email content, including tracking pixels, before a user even opens the message.
In this Email Mavlers infographic, Hank Hoffmeier, Sr. Marketing Ops Manager at Kickbox, says:
“Consumers are tired of being tracked and having data about them collected. They are fighting back. Email providers are pre-opening emails, diluting open rates, and more and more people are turning to disposable email addresses.”
What this means: Your open rate may spike, but it doesn’t reflect real user behavior. It reflects inbox-level automation.
2. Image Blocking Leads to Missed Opens
Email opens are tracked by loading a tiny invisible 1×1 pixel image embedded in the message. But that doesn’t always happen.
- Many email clients block images (and pixels) by default.
- Some users manually turn off image loading.
- Smart devices, such as watches or voice assistants, render the message but skip the images.
As Chad White of Oracle Digital Experience Agency puts it:
“Tracking pixel-based opens is deflated by image caching, image blocking, and email clients that don’t render images, like smart watches and voice assistants.”
Result: Your open rate under-reports legitimate engagement from users who just didn’t load images.
3. Email Preview Panes Trigger False Opens
Many inboxes (especially on desktop) show email previews that auto-load content, including the tracking pixel, even if the user never fully opens or engages with the message.
Result: Your ESP logs it as an “open,” even though the recipient might’ve just glanced at the first line before deleting it.
4. Bot Traffic Is Skewing Your Data
Security systems used by corporate email clients often scan incoming messages by pre-clicking every link. This can also trigger open tracking, even though no human ever interacted.
Result: Bot activity appears as “opens” or even “clicks,” making your engagement metrics look healthier than they actually are.
5. Open ≠ Interest or Action
Let’s say a real person did open your email. That still doesn’t mean they:
- Read the full message
- Clicked anything
- Took any meaningful action
An open doesn’t equal engagement. It simply means the email is technically loaded.
Bottom line: A high open rate doesn’t necessarily indicate that your email was effective. It just tells you it existed.
6. No Context, No Conversion Insight
Open rates tell you nothing about what happens next. They can’t track:
- Scroll depth
- Time spent reading
- Click intent
- Conversion path
Image Source: Mavlers
TL;DR: Time to Reevaluate the Open Rate
You can keep an eye on opens, but don’t let them lead your reporting. They’re inflated by prefetching, undercounted by privacy settings, and diluted by bots.
The real success of your email campaign lies in what happens after the open—and that’s where we’re headed next.
What Should Smart Email Marketers Be Watching Now?
So, what should email marketers, who’ve forever used open rates to measure engagement, do?
To understand how your emails are performing, you need to start analyzing a broader set of metrics.
Here’s where to look:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR shows the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email. It is typically shown as a percentage of total recipients or openers. It’s one of the cleanest signals of intent and interest.
If your email content, CTA, and offer are relevant, clicks will show it. If not, CTR will expose the disconnect.
- Conversion Rate
This metric measures the percentage of recipients who took the desired action after clicking. Could be completing a purchase, accessing downloadable resources, or, registering for a webinar.
It connects email to outcomes, not just engagement.
- Revenue Per Email (RPE)
Especially for e-commerce and DTC brands, this one hits where it counts: the amount of money each email generates. RPE provides a single, trackable number that directly ties effort to ROI.
- Behavioral Uplift
Kath Pay, email marketing expert and founder of Holistic Email Marketing, argues that too many marketers stop at opens and clicks. And as she puts it:
“If your attribution model only looks at clicks, you’re missing the majority of email’s value. You’re undercounting brand exposure. You’re undervaluing cross-channel behavior. You’re overlooking the invisible influence that drives results.”
She’s not wrong. Email often influences actions outside the inbox and outside traditional tracking windows. A user might not click your email, but will:
- Google your brand a few hours later.
- Type your URL directly into their browser.
- Visit your Amazon or Flipkart store.
- Walk into your physical store after reading the email.
But how to track the zero-click behaviour for email success?
Kath recommends looking beyond direct attribution and spotting behavioral spikes around your send times. Things like:
- A bump in site traffic the day of or a few days after an email send.
- Increased direct or “none” traffic sources in GA4.
- A spike in search volume for your brand, product, or promo keywords.
- Higher sales across channels post-email, even without click-throughs.
In theory, it sounds revolutionary. But how exactly do you track metrics so complicated?
Luckily, this is where AI tools and smarter integrations step in-
- AI-powered platforms, such as Klaviyo or Mailmodo, help identify patterns and predict user behavior.
- Email heatmaps that show where users click, scroll, and drop off.
- CRM integration for a holistic view, linking email actions to real customer behavior.
- Predictive analytics to flag churn risks, suggest content, and optimize send times.
Wrapping Up
The email open rates aren’t totally unusable. Still, they’re just no longer the star of the show. They’re still useful for spotting trends, gauging subject line performance, or flagging inboxing issues. But they shouldn’t be used heavily to gauge email performance.
