{"id":46,"date":"2009-03-18T16:54:47","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T22:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/?p=46"},"modified":"2009-03-19T08:47:44","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T14:47:44","slug":"in-defense-of-the-email-open-rate-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/insights\/in-defense-of-the-email-open-rate-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of the Email Open Rate (sort of)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past months, many have proclaimed that the\u00c2\u00a0email open rate<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0is obsolete and utterly useless.\u00c2\u00a0 The poor open rate has become\u00c2\u00a0a persona non grata, and while not as risky as trying to defend the AIG bonus structure, I do think someone needs to stand-up for this email metric.<\/p>\n

While I completely agree that clients often focus too much on the open rate, it can be misused, and it isn’t as relevant as it once was because, among other reasons, email clients are more likely today to suppress the image that is used to track an open,\u00c2\u00a0I do believe that the open rate\u00c2\u00a0still provides value and it is worth following.<\/p>\n

Ask any professional football coach what the most important measure of success is and he will tell you that it’s all about wins and losses.\u00c2\u00a0 However,\u00c2\u00a0he will also acknowledge that when analyzing\u00c2\u00a0a team’s performance, you need to go beyond the end result (win\/loss) and look at diagnostic metrics\u00c2\u00a0like how many yards you gained on offense, how many yards you gave-up on defense,\u00c2\u00a0how many fumbles and interceptions you had, how many penalties you incurred,\u00c2\u00a0etc.<\/p>\n

I believe you take a similar approach\u00c2\u00a0with email marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 While, if I am an online retailer,\u00c2\u00a0I am most concerned about conversion rates and sales, metrics like the open rate provide value.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously, before someone can purchase as a result of your email, they must click on a link, and before they click on a link, they have to open the email.\u00c2\u00a0 If you aren’t getting the email to the inbox and the subject line isn’t compelling or engaging, you aren’t going to get a conversion.<\/p>\n

I believe that the\u00c2\u00a0open rate can still provide insights that will help you improve your email marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 If the conversion rate was significantly different between two emails and the open rate\u00c2\u00a0for the better converting email was much higher (and assuming the emails were sent within a reasonable time of one another), I might conclude that the subject line, whether it be the way it was written or the offer communicated, was the culprit.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously, I would look at other metrics and analytics but\u00c2\u00a0the fact that the\u00c2\u00a0open rates were so different\u00c2\u00a0would likely impact my conclusions.\u00c2\u00a0 Open rates have also been helpful in\u00c2\u00a0identifying deliverability issues (when clients didn’t have inbox tracking) and enagement by various segments of\u00c2\u00a0a list (e.g. when comparing recent subscribers to ones that have been subscribed for over a year).<\/p>\n

So what do you think?\u00c2\u00a0 Is it worthwhile to track the open rate or is it ready to go the way of the buggy whip?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past months, many have proclaimed that the\u00c2\u00a0email open rate\u00c2\u00a0is obsolete and utterly useless.\u00c2\u00a0 The poor open rate has become\u00c2\u00a0a persona non grata, and while not as risky as trying to defend the AIG bonus structure, I do think someone needs to stand-up for this email metric. While I completely agree that clients often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-commerce","category-email-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaydigital.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}