I am so sick and tired of hearing how email response rates are declining. There’s such confusion in this area and it all comes down to MEASURED vs. ACTUAL response rates. What’s the difference you ask?

MEASURED response rates are what you’re all reading in industry reports. These are the so called “industry norms”. When you look at them and compare them quarter over quarter, you will indeed see declining open rates. Can this really be true? Perhaps a little, but it’s a broad statement especially when you consider open rates which are taking the biggest hit.

I beg you to consider the realities of our e-world - i.e. email clients that are defaulted to have images turned off — this means we can’t track these opens since our little 1X1 pixel can’t be tripped which results in the reporting of fewer opens OR handheld devices like blackberry’s that view emails as text which again are not trackable for the same reason as above. (Wow that’s one hell of a run-on sentence! Good thing this is a blog and you can forgive me!)

In my opinion, we should seriously consider the value of ever tracking open rates. But maybe that’s just me. What do you think? Should we stop reporting this misunderstood metric and put more emphasis on click-throughs and conversion? Comments please!!

To me the ACTUAL response rates are what really matter and these can only be determined through click-through rates and conversion. Of course deliverability fits in here too. Long live deliverability for without it, we are nowhere (that’s profound).

In the case of e-commerce, it really comes down to sales. Success for e-commerce isn’t really about how many people open or click - it’s about how much revenue is generated! It’s about $$$!

Actually, what’s not about money?

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