Is email tracking dead and should marketers stop using open rates?

Key findings

• Context matters: Open rates, while imperfect, can still serve as a directional indicator when analyzed over time, especially for identifying sudden shifts in deliverability performance. A drastic drop (e.g., 50% to 25%) might signal an issue.
• Privacy impacts: Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) from Apple and similar initiatives from other providers have significantly impacted the accuracy of open rate tracking, as they pre-fetch images, leading to inflated or false opens. More details on how accurate email open rates are can be found here.
• Spam folder exclusion: Generally, opens do not register for emails delivered to the spam folder, even if a user manually interacts with them. This makes opens a potential, albeit imperfect, indicator of inbox placement.
• Beyond opens: Marketers should broaden their focus to other engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, conversions, reply rates, and unsubscribe rates, for a more comprehensive understanding of campaign performance.
• Reliable signals: For true deliverability assessment, aggregate data and indicators like spam complaint rates and consistent inbox placement (as viewed through tools like Google Postmaster Tools) are more reliable than individual open rates.

Key considerations

• Holistic view: Avoid relying solely on open rates for campaign success or deliverability health. Integrate them with other engagement signals and business objectives.
• Trend analysis: Use open rates for tracking trends within your own campaigns rather than comparing them to industry benchmarks or as a precise measure of individual engagement. Learn how opens should be used as a metric.
• Transparency: Marketers should be transparent about their tracking practices. If recipients would object to tracking, it calls into question the ethical basis of such methods.
• Adaptation: Marketers need to adapt to the evolving privacy landscape by exploring new methodologies for measuring engagement and demonstrating value. As Salesforce highlights, email open rates can still be relevant when aggregated over time.

Key opinions

• Declining reliability: Many marketers agree that individual open rates have become unreliable due to privacy changes and automated systems, leading to inflated or inaccurate numbers.
• Comparative value: Open rates are still considered useful when comparing them to historical data for the same sender, as a sudden dip can indicate a potential deliverability problem that requires investigation.
• Beyond open rates: There's a strong push to focus on alternative metrics like click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and reply rates, which offer more concrete proof of recipient engagement and interest. For more, see alternative metrics to open rates.
• Vendor claims: Skepticism exists regarding sensational claims about new privacy features (like universal banners for tracking pixels) that lack strong statistical evidence, particularly if these claims come from businesses with a vested interest in alternative tracking solutions.
• Inbox proxy: Some marketers believe that if an email registers an open, it probably landed in the inbox, as opens typically don't occur in the spam folder.

Key considerations

• Shift focus: Marketers should re-evaluate their key performance indicators (KPIs), moving away from a singular focus on open rates towards more actionable metrics that directly correlate with business goals, as discussed by The CMO about open and conversion rates.
• Adapt strategies: It's prudent to anticipate further privacy enhancements and proactively explore new methods for engagement tracking that are less reliant on traditional open pixels.
• Contextual analysis: When an email open rate drops suddenly, investigate other factors like content changes, list hygiene, or sender reputation before attributing it solely to tracking limitations.
• Cold email considerations: For cold outreach, some marketers even suggest that a 'zero open rate' might be ideal if it prevents negative signals or deliverability issues associated with tracking.

Key opinions

• Flawed from inception: Experts note that open rates have always had inherent flaws, such as automated opens by security scanners or preview panes, making them an imprecise measure of true engagement.
• Ethical tracking: If email marketing relies on recipients being unaware of tracking, it raises ethical concerns. User consent and transparency are becoming increasingly important.
• Inbox placement indicator: While not perfect, an open (particularly for consumer mailbox providers) still suggests the email likely reached the inbox rather than the spam folder. However, this is less reliable in enterprise environments. This is a common concern regarding email tracking pixels.
• Gmail's perspective: Gmail's definition of 'engagement' (which influences deliverability) differs from how senders typically define it, often focusing on user-initiated actions like replies or adding to contacts, rather than just opening an email.
• Misinformation: Experts express frustration with inaccurate or sensationalized claims about email tracking that can mislead marketers and cause unnecessary panic.

Key considerations

• Beyond metrics: Focus on the fundamental goal of email marketing, which is to drive desired actions, rather than fixating on proxy metrics like opens. Are you going to spam? That's a more critical issue.
• Reputation is key: Maintain a strong sender reputation through proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), consistent sending volume, and low complaint rates. These factors have a far greater impact on deliverability than open rate accuracy.
• Adapt to privacy: Acknowledge and adapt to the reality of increased privacy controls. This means relying less on pixel-based tracking and more on other forms of engagement data and backend analytics. MarketingProfs provides insights on how to still use open rates.
• Industry education: Educate marketing teams and stakeholders on the true meaning and limitations of email metrics in the current landscape.

Key findings

• Privacy by design: Key privacy initiatives (like Apple's Mail Privacy Protection) explicitly aim to reduce tracking capabilities, obscuring user IP addresses and pre-loading images, which directly impacts the reliability of traditional open pixels.
• Engagement signals: Documentation from major mailbox providers (e.g., Google Postmaster Tools) consistently emphasizes active user engagement, such as replies, clicks, or moving emails out of spam, as crucial for sender reputation and deliverability, rather than just opens. Learn about Google Postmaster Tools.
• Security focus: Automated scanning and image proxying are often implemented for security reasons, to protect users from malicious content. A side effect of this is reduced open rate accuracy.
• Compliance: Regulations like GDPR and CCPA necessitate clear consent for data collection, which impacts how tracking can be implemented and how data can be used, reinforcing the move away from covert methods.

Key considerations

• Align with best practices: Marketers should design their email programs to align with documented best practices from providers, which prioritize sending wanted, relevant mail over relying on ambiguous tracking data. Specifically, Campaign Monitor discusses the future of open rates and MPP.
• Focus on value: Understand that providers are increasingly focused on the value proposition of emails to their users. Deliverability is tied to whether users truly want and interact with your content, not just whether a pixel fired.
• Alternative measurement: Explore server-side tracking, unique link clicks, and other methods that offer more robust and privacy-compliant data collection for engagement metrics. Even Gmail's open tracking has nuances.