How is the number of opened emails measured?

Owned by support (Unlicensed)
Last updated: mars 10, 2015 by Valérie D'Auteuil (Unlicensed)
2 min read

Email open rates are difficult to measure accurately because they are tracked based on an image loading in the recipient's inbox.

Most email providers, including Microsoft Outlook, deactivate image loading by default. Similarly, text emails cannot be tracked at all since they do not contain an image. This is an unfortunate limitation of technology and often results in the number of HTML opens displayed in an email report being quite a bit lower than the actual number of views.

Here are a few reasons why email open rates are not always an accurate reflection of message penetration:

  1. If images are downloaded by default in your inbox, and you use a preview pane to scroll through your inbox, an email viewed briefly in this manner will be considered opened, even if the content was not read.
  2. If images are blocked by default, you could potentially open an email, read it and even click on a link without downloading the images. As a result, the email will not be considered opened even though the material was read.
  3. If a recipient receives the text version of an email, the text open will not be tracked.

    We recommend that you measure the success of your email performance by tracking clicks, which are also displayed in your report. This number serves as a more accurate indication of how effective your call to action was and also allows you to quickly view a list of prospects who responded to your message.

 

  1. If the images of an email are not loaded, the lead's Activities report available from his lead profile in PUBLITRAC will not indicate an email open, even though they may have opened and read the email.

    Sometimes a lead who did not load the images of an email may click on a tracked link or copy-paste the URL from a text-only email directly into their browser. In these cases, the lead's Activities report available from his lead profile in PUBLITRAC will indicate an email tracker "click," which will confirm that they did open the email even though the system was not able to track the activity.