To better understand email's influence on sales beyond direct clicks, analyze the behavior of contacts before they convert. One brand tracked how many emails new buyers had opened in the 10 weeks leading up to their purchase. This reveals email's impact on "lurkers" who read consistently but rarely click.

Reported open rates are inherently flawed due to inflation from bots and privacy features like Apple's. Their true value isn't the absolute number, but their utility as a directional metric. Use them to compare relative performance in A/B tests (e.g., subject lines) rather than as a definitive measure of campaign success.

Don't fear that AI summaries in Gmail and Apple Mail will kill your open rates. If your content is genuinely valuable, people will still open it to get the full experience, just as they'd watch a favorite show instead of reading a synopsis. AI simply helps users filter out the noise.

Standard email marketing metrics like opens and clicks are not accurate. Due to security protocols and bot activity, many email service providers pre-click and pre-open emails, leading to wildly inflated numbers. Marketers should understand that these metrics are fundamentally unreliable for measuring genuine user engagement.

Open rates are unreliable due to automated actions, particularly Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (iOS 15+) which pre-fetches content and marks emails as opened without user interaction. Focus on metrics that reflect true intent, like clicks or conversions influenced by the subject line alone.

Due to Apple's Mail Privacy Protection automatically loading tracking pixels, open rates are inflated and no longer accurately reflect individual actions. However, these auto-opens don't fire if an email lands in spam. Therefore, use open rates to monitor trends and detect deliverability problems.

Tracking pixels used for open rates harm email deliverability and can get your domain flagged as spam. While useful for marketing A/B tests, sales teams focused on getting replies should disable tracking entirely. This maximizes the chance of landing in the primary inbox and appears more authentic to both filters and recipients.

Despite claims that Apple's privacy changes and bots have made them irrelevant, open rates remain a valuable leading indicator for email performance. Marketers who dismiss them are ignoring a crucial signal of audience engagement and list health. These metrics are provided by platforms and should be monitored.

Instead of guessing why open rates are low, the first diagnostic step should be a disciplined A/B test. Experiment with two different subject lines to gather data on what captures your audience's attention before changing anything else.