Open rate is an email marketing metric that measures the percentage of recipients who opened an email compared to the total number of emails delivered. It helps gauge audience engagement with your campaigns.
Open rate indicates how many people viewed your email after it was delivered to their inbox or spam folder. This metric is tracked using a small tracking pixel embedded in the email body, which loads when the recipient opens the message.
While open rate is widely used to measure engagement, it is not always 100% accurate due to factors like image-blocking settings and privacy protection tools (such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection).
Open rate is calculated using this formula: (Unique Opens ÷ Delivered Emails) × 100
For example, if you send 10,000 emails and 2,000 recipients open them, the open rate is: (2,000 ÷ 10,000) × 100 = 20%
Some email clients block tracking pixels, so actual open rates may differ from reported figures.
Open rate matters for several reasons:
Marketers and businesses use open rate for:
The benchmark varies by industry, but 20–30% is generally considered average for marketing emails.
Possible reasons include unengaging subject lines, poor list quality, or deliverability problems.
Not always. Privacy features and image-blocking can skew results, so open rates should be combined with click-through and conversion metrics for better insights.
