Open rate is arguably not a very reliable metric for benchmarking your email marketing success. However over time your Open Rate (OR) does provide you with an indication of how attractive your messages is perceived by your  recipients.

Acronyms and definitions - email marketing

Open rate definition relating to email marketing
Open rate can only be measured if you include a code in your email message. Obviously 100% text based emails cannot be measured, which also includes text emails delivered as part of a multi-part alternative email brodcast.

The open rate (OR) is generally measured as a percentage of the total number of emails sent (measurements do vary). The open rate is considered a useful metric for evaluating response to an email campaign but it should be noted that open rates can be deceiving.

If you are using Open Rate as an indicator of your message attractiveness, it is advisable to implement a metric I call “Open Rate ratio to Click-through-rate.”

A number of factors influence the success of your open rate.
Some of them are;

- the strenght and attractiveness of your brand in the eyes of the recipient
- the recipients expectations towards the contents of your message
- your past email marketing behavior (if you regularly send out
irrelevant messages to any specific recipient not providing any value
to her, your email is not highly likely to get opened)
- number of receivers whom have added you to the Junk Sender list
- the frequency of your communication (remember not too often, not too seldom)
- the wording of your subject line (bet you heard that one before :- )
- the positioning of your Call To Actions in the actual email template. A clever positioning of MWR’s (Most Wanted Responses) in a B2B email should take into consideration the recipients potential use of the Outlook Preview Pane)

and other factors.

By the way, did you know that email marketing often is referred to as permission email marketing. You can learn more about the distinction if you sign-up for the Meemoo2 Marketingboss newsletter - it is free, of course.

If you want to learn more about email marketing, why not see if there is an email marketing course open