Return Path opened up a RFC of a fashion, as to whether or not Open Rates should be retired as a metric:
Is it Time to Retire the Open Rate?
Here’s what I think:
It has long been a suggestion from us security types that preview panes (and any other form of automatic graphic rendering) be disabled to avoid downloading pernicious payloads. How much of an adoption incursion into the userbase that notion has garnered is undetermined, but some email clients do come with such facility disabled by default; that surely does have to have an impact on the measurement of open rates.
In this day and age, with people’s time being limited, and their use of the Internet being pulled hither and neigh, why would someone settle for such a crude attempt at measuring success? It is like saying the competitors in the 100-yard dash in the Olympics are successful merely because they got out of the blocks. The special olympics as it were.
ROI, and actual measurable actions taken on the part of the recipient seems, to my mind, to be much more intelligent.
At the very least, you have to cross the finish line to be considered among the winners, after all.
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