The Unreliably of Email Open Rates.

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In simpler times, the success of an email campaign was measured by the open rates of the mailing.   These metrics seemed reliable enough.  However, changes in consumer behavior, and of course technology, have shown open rates are not an accurate gauge for email engagement.  Newer technology includes Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) launched in 2021.

MPP can interfere with email marketing open metrics.  Basically, it gives the user an option to hide information about when and where they open an email. By doing so a marketer cannot ‘see’ if their email was actually opened because the emails are marked as being read, regardless of the real status.

And that makes those unique clicks, known as CTOR (Click-to-open rates) unreliable as well. However, email opens have never been a highly accurate metric because of issues like image caching, blocking, and clients not rendering images.

When dealing with metrics, CTOR measures unique clicks that an email gets, divided by the number of unique opens.  Because MPP hides email open information, the CTOR becomes an inaccurate metric.  In addition, recipients using Apple Mail Privacy Protection, messes with

  • ·        Segments, using the most engaged or least engaged recipients will not be correct.
  • ·        Engagement with your email, in general, will be falsely elevated.
  • ·        Resending emails to non-opened messages will be moot.
  • ·        Those emails such as a transactional email, which is sent in response to an action, like opening an email will be unreliable.

·        Subscriber activity, like the time the message was opened, device used, and location stats for the message will not be right.

 However, there are selected features of an email message that remain accurate.  These include any personalization to the message, subject line, and click-through’s (on a link in the content) in the message itself.   Reliable metrics continue be:

  • ·        Conversion rates.
  • ·        New memberships
  • ·        The ROI gleaned from an email campaign.
  • ·        Click-through rates measure by the percentage of people who clicked on a link within the email message.
  • ·        Forward to a friend.
  • ·        Interaction with a survey or poll

Will open rates be reliable if the recipient does not use Apple Mail Privacy Protection? These type of changes to email will not be the last.  Other companies could follow Apple’s lead, all with the goal of protecting consumer dates. View these changes as catalysts to refine your email marketing strategies. Whether your email marketing is geared to increase online sales, or foot traffic to your physical location, grow donations, or attract more visitors to your website, adapting to these changes is key.

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