Example: If you delivered 5,000 emails and 1,100 were opened, your open rate is 22%.
Why Email Open Rate matters
The open rate is the first step of the email funnel. If people do not open your email, nothing else in it matters, so it shows how well your subject line, sender name and send time work.
It is best used to compare your own emails with each other, such as testing two subject lines, rather than as an absolute measure of success.
How to read it
Open rates vary widely by industry, list quality and audience, so compare against your own history. Treat the number with caution: email apps that preload images, such as Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection, can record opens that a person never made, which inflates the figure.
Because of this, clicks and conversions are a more reliable guide to whether an email worked.
How to improve it
- Test subject lines and preview text against each other.
- Use a recognizable sender name that people trust.
- Send at times when your audience tends to read email.
- Remove inactive subscribers so your list stays healthy and deliverability holds up.
- Segment your list so that emails are relevant to the people receiving them.
Common mistakes
- Treating open rate as exact when privacy features inflate it.
- Comparing your rate with other companies instead of your own history.
- Optimizing for opens with misleading subject lines that hurt trust and clicks.
- Ignoring click rate and conversions, which show real engagement.
“Which of my recent email campaigns had the highest open rate, and how did their click rates compare?”
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