How opens are tracked. There are basically two ways:
- A small invisible image called a web beacon is inserted in the email. This image is specific to a subscriber so when they open the email and their software requests the image from the sending server, the software knows what subscriber downloaded the image. And the open is recorded.
- If a subscriber clicks a link in the email and the link is tracked (which hopefully your ESP is doing), then an open is recorded. Not all service providers have this implemented and if yours doesn't, they are lame. It makes no sense for a click to be tracked and an open to not be recorded. Our software does this.
Many times the email is opened and read, but an open is not recorded. Here are the ways:
- Web beacons are stripped by the email software. Yes, beacons are reasonably easy to identify and the software simply strips them out. The subscriber can have images displayed, but since the web beacon was stripped out, no open is recorded.
- The subscriber reads the email with images off. Many email programs have images off by default and if your email is primarily text, the subscriber may not display images - they might simply read the email with images off.
- The subscriber has a blackberry or other device and reads the text only.
Other times the image is downloaded, but the email is not read:
- The subscriber is using Outlook with the preview pane and images are enabled. They don't actually open the email, but the web beacon is downloaded and an open is recorded.
- The email server of the subscriber automatically downloads all images within the subscribers email. We can see this happens because on some domains, all opens occur within seconds of the actual sent time. That wouldn't consistently happen unless a machine was doing the downloading of the web beacon.
- The subscriber opens the email and they have images enabled, but they don't read it at all.
So What Does It All Mean?
It means you should stop paying attention to the actual number. The only thing important about open rates is a way to measure list fatigue and if you are performing A/B testing. And even with list fatigue you need to be careful, because your open rate could be declining due to the increased use of image blocking software.
So What Should You Focus On?
Clicks. And Sales (or donations). Basically you should track actions by the subscriber because that is what you're trying to do. By focusing on clicks, you will use more links (one of the most common errors is having too few of links in the content) and then, using google analytics, you can also track what the subscriber does once they are on your website.
And by the way, clicks should always be tracked as a percentage of the number of emails sent (less the bounces).
But this requires a whole new article, which I will write in the near future.
