Are Open Rates Really Declining?

According to the Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Benchmark survey, October 2005, in 2004, the most common B2B open percentage range, according to 24% of those surveyed, 30% – 39%. In 2005 the most common open percentage range, with 21% reporting a range of 20% - 29%.

To guard email users from Spam and questionable content, technology has been developed to block images by default. Filtering has tightened which leads to more mail being delivered to bulk mail folders. Because a one pixel image must be rendered in an email to measure an open, image blocking has had an impact on declining open rates.

Because 52% of business people always use the preview pane, 33% of business people read all of the email in the preview pane and nearly 80% of business people use Outlook as their email client (EmailLabs, Preview Pane Study, November 2005) it important to note that Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express with Service Pack 2 block images by default. Your message actually may be reaching more people than the open rate percentage leads you to believe.

Something to consider is that while there has been a decline in opens, there has not been a similar drop in click-through percentages. This indicates an issue of measurement. Without the display of the HTML, there isn’t an “open”. However, the click-through percentages tell us otherwise. When reviewing your email marketing campaign results, be sure to look at click-throughs and conversions as well. There is more to the story than simply open rates.