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Stop Relying on Email Opens & Clicks: Better Metrics for Email Marketing

Clutch your pearls because today we’ll be talking about how email opens and clicks aren’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to email marketing metrics. Whether you’re an email marketer, a digital marketing manager, or a marketing lead managing emails as part of your wider responsibilities, you want to make sure you’re measuring what matters to make sure your email marketing is performing at its best.

But where do you get started when you want to stop relying on email opens and clicks and start focusing on better metrics for your email marketing?

Why shouldn’t you rely on opens and clicks?

Well, it’s best to get the ‘don’ts’ out of the way before the ‘do’s’, isn’t it?

Let’s paint a familiar picture to make it a bit easier:

You’re talking to a fellow marketer when they tell you their emails are performing amazingly due to high opens (20%+) and clicks (2-4%), but they’re struggling to tell you any results outside of that. There’s little no emphasis on results in terms of conversions or revenue, and too much emphasis on opens as an entirely positive indicator.

But Beth, why aren’t opens a positive indicator?

Well, we’re assuming that an open can only be a good thing because it indicates:
A)     Someone saw the subject line and loved it/was intrigued by it
B)     They read your name or email and automatically knew they’d want to read
C)    The content in the subject line and preheader is interesting

These assumptions could be correct… or it could just be that someone has opened an email to delete it or remove the unread email notification.

But why are clicks and opens flawed on a more granular level?

Why email opens aren’t reliable (or necessarily positive)

As we’ve just touched on, a lot of the positivity around open rates tends to rest on the assumption that they indicate an interest in the from-name, subject line, or preheader. Here’s the thing, email opens simply tell you that someone has opened your email.

What an email open doesn’t tell you is whether your audience read, enjoyed, or engaged with your email, making it difficult to estimate the overall impact of your email marketing efforts from that one metric.

And we’ve not even touched on the technical issues impacting open rates!

Are click rates any more reliable than open rates?

In short, they’re stronger but still not fully reliable. Clicks will, for the most part, indicate stronger user interest compared to opens because it’s a better way to track genuine engagement and interaction within email content. However, like email open rates, there are limitations to click reliability, too.

What are the limitations and issues affecting click reliability?

There are a few technical issues that can complicate the reliability of clicks, such as:

• Email client inaccuracies: not all clicks will be accurately tracked depending on the email client (e.g., some email clients will block some tracking pixels as a privacy feature)
• Automated scanning: some email providers or security software auto-scans links, which can inflate clicks.
• Cross-device issues: you know when you open an email on your desktop, then open it later on your phone and actually click on something in the email? Yeah, that can affect accurate attribution, too!

There is also another host of issues relating to bots and security filters that impact open rates, including:

• Organisations using security software: organisations often use software such as Mimecast or Barracuda that implement cloud-based email filtering to detect any security threats, including spam filtering and phishing protection, and URL protection and inbound filtering. The bots used to test links for safety and the filtering methods can often result in inflated click-through rates and false engagement.
• Delays due to security: the security checks implemented by many organisations can mean an email meant to be sent at 8am arrives at 5pm, which has a knock-on effect on timing data.

If you have an awareness of these factors, you’re better equipped to see the whole picture rather than zero in on clicks and opens as the only positive metrics.

After all, if you know that there’s a rapid-fire of click-throughs once an email is sent, it follows that there’s a good chance it’s due to automated scans, making it easier to take the data and analyse it with all factors in mind.

How can you overcome the complexity of real email marketing measurement?

Firstly, it’s important for us to note here that it’s not easy to start focusing on accurate email performance measurement – many email platforms will inflate metrics that leave marketers with artificial results. But once you start prioritising a deeper analysis – combined metrics, hypotheses, and reliable email platforms that prioritise deliverability and usage guidelines – you’ll be able to get a full scope of how your emails are performing and how to improve them.

It’s time to measure the email marketing metrics that matter

Try saying that three times over! 
 
The TL;DR: Opens and clicks aren’t going to cut it

If you want to truly understand what your subscribers want, and to deliver it, opens and clicks alone aren’t sufficient. You need to align your email marketing strategy with genuine business outcomes, including revenue, engagement, and impact to get the full picture and the full profit of effective email marketing.

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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails (coming soon). It will drop the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.