An email open rate is a key metric in email marketing that measures the percentage of recipients who open an email from a campaign or mailing list. Essentially, it tracks how many people opened your email out of the total number of people who received it.

This metric is fundamental in understanding the success of your email marketing efforts because if people aren’t opening your emails, they aren’t seeing your content.

Email open rates are typically expressed as percentages. A 20% open rate, for instance, means that 20% of your subscribers opened your email.

How Email Open Rate is Tracked

Email open rates are tracked using a tiny, invisible image called a tracking pixel embedded in the email. When a recipient opens the email and their email client (like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo) loads this image, it sends a signal back to the sender’s email service provider (ESP), marking the email as opened.

However, this method has limitations. If a user’s email client doesn’t load images by default or if the user reads the email in a text-only version, the ESP might not record the email as opened, even if the person did read it.

Average Open Rates

The average email open rate varies by industry, audience, and the nature of the email. In general, most industries report open rates between 15-25%.

Your goal should be to track your open rates over time and try to improve them by focusing on the elements mentioned above.

Also read: What is an Email Click-Through Rate