Open Rate – What is open rate?

The open rate is a percentage that expresses the number of subscribers who have opened an email sent through a particular email marketing campaign. This is one of the most important metrics or KPIs to take into account when sending mass emails as it defines the success or failure of a campaign.  
    

Índice

  1. How is open rate measured?
  2. What is considered a good open rate?
  3. How can you improve the opening rate of email marketing campaigns?

How is open rate measured?

The opening rate is the percentage resulting from the number of emails that have been opened by the recipients out of all those that have been delivered. That is, those not delivered are excluded, whether they are hard bounces (Hard Bounces) or soft bounces (Soft Bounce).   

What is considered a good open rate?

The first thing to keep in mind when assessing the opening rate is that it is impossible to achieve 100%. It depends on many factors, such as whether the email can be considered spam, the interest of subscribers, and even the sector or type of email. In general, for a commercial email or newsletter, a good result is usually considered to be a 20% open rate or more. For transactional emails, for example, we normally find ourselves facing a higher ratio that can reach 60% on average. SMS Marketing campaigns , by their nature, achieve much higher opening results, in some cases greater than 90%. It depends a lot, therefore, on the type of campaign we are carrying out or on various factors such as the way we have built the mailing list. A list with double opt-in , for example, will normally achieve a higher opening rate, since we will have subscribers who have verified their interest in our communications.        

How can you improve the opening rate of email marketing campaigns?

There are several elements with which you can improve the opening rate:

  • The email from which the campaign is sent:  Avoid using an impersonal “no reply” address. A good tip is to create an apparently personal address, and connect it to the addresses of the people in charge of managing the campaign or your support team.

  • The subject:  A personalized subject is very important. Simply including the name of the subscriber who receives the email can, in some cases, double the opening rate.

  • Segmentation:  it is one of the keys in email marketing. Managing to send each email to the subscribers who have the most affinity and interest with the specific reason for sending it will optimize your opening rate significantly.

  • Resending after a few days:  there are tools that allow you to automate a resend after a specific time to all those subscribers who have not opened your campaign email. By changing the subject, the open rate can be increased by up to 8%.