Michael L. Perry (e) MLPerryNY@mac.com (t) @mlperryny (fb) www.facebook.com/mlperryny (LI) www.MLPerryNY.com (m) 973.229.4695 What IS The Value of Your Open Rate? Published: 18 Aug 08, Online Marketing Connect http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/michaelperry/2008/08/what-is-the-value-of-your-open-rate/

Hey, everyone, hope you all had a great weekend and welcome to a new week of all the wonderful things we do as marketers, including e-mail marketing. I have been asked to post some thoughts on the value of the open rate. Open rates are amazing things and we put so much stock in them, or at least some of us use to, but truthfully there isn’t a lot of value in open rates.

Now don’t hate me, I know some of you are still running around your organization spouting the latest statistics of your latest campaign but that open rate doesn’t tell us what we once thought it did.

Open rates are measured from HTML, so text versions don’t even count in the construct of the measurement. I understand that this isn’t new and earth-shattering news but let’s take a quick look at some quick examples of what counts and what doesn’t.

If your recipient is blocking HTML in their inbox, but opens and reads your email, it doesn’t count. Now the question is “How many of us are shutting down HTML?” I don’t know, but I do know the number is growing.

If the person you send to reads it in the preview pane, it counts toward the open rate. Even though they didn’t technically open it. What does the technicality mean?

Depends on what you want to make out of it: some will say that “an open is an open,” but I would question that because there was no “quality of engagement.” Yes, they opened it by reading it in the preview pane but they didn’t even think enough of what you sent to actually fully open it and read it again. This is much akin to someone reading teaser copy on an OE and tossing it—yes, they read the teaser copy but it didn’t get them to engage the collateral.

Here is the other thing…so they opened it? Did they really like your offer? Was your offer even part of the subject line? What about your design and graphics/images? Does an open rate help you understand any of this? Maybe for the subject line, and maybe the offer if it was part of the subject line…I think you see where I am headed. We need to be careful we aren’t using open rates to pass judgment on campaign elements they weren’t meant to measure.

What about those of us that are on the road a lot, grabbing email on mobile devices? A whole slew of issues there. One habit I am guilty of is opening everything to look at it and then deciding what I can immediately dump. Sometimes something catches my eye and therefore it was a “good open,” but most times I just dump it; so regardless of HTML/Text issues there is still a “quality of engagement” issue. So even if you do get credit for the open does it really matter?

Where does an open rate have value? Testing subject lines, either A/B split or DoE, is one place. Even though you can’t get the text version read it should still directionally be valid, as long as a skew doesn’t exist in your list (HTML v. Text). It also may have value in understanding some longer trends in engagement. However it does suffer the issues associated with mobile email.

As I pointed out above, there are instances that cloud the validity of the measure (text not counting; pane previewing). The basic question to ask is what exactly are your objectives for the campaign? Is it increased sales, increased registrations, or perhaps increased pageviews? If it is those types of things we have to think about better paradigms and metrics that get us there. Actually we need to think about better email design as well.

The industry is moving toward clicks and clicks-to-conversion (click-to-sales) and that is great because that is starting to push us toward a web analytics-type approach. Web analytics are so much more robust than email analytics and we could all benefit from taking a step back and looking at holistic measurement plans that address the complete digital spectrum of communication.

I would love to hear your comments and if you have any suggestions for the next post let me know. Right now I am thinking about posting on “quality of engagement” and measuring success of a digital communication before, during and after deployment.

Happy Monday everyone!!!!