How do AI assistants and MPP impact email open rates, and what are better metrics to measure outbound campaign effectiveness?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from G2 responds that marketers should use metrics like click-to-open rate (CTOR), conversion rate, and bounce rate to measure email marketing success after MPP rolled out. These metrics provide a clearer picture of engagement and campaign performance.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that analyzing full event logs and user agents can help identify the source of email opens.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor responds that MPP privacy features have had a big impact on open rates which are no longer a reliable benchmark. They suggest that marketers focus on clicks, conversions and revenue as a better guage of performance.
Email marketer from HubSpot explains that since MPP, marketers need to focus on engagement, and that while opens are still useful, they are no longer reliable. Instead metrics like email clicks, website traffic and attribution are more important.
Email marketer from Reddit shares on r/emailmarketing that with MPP, you should look at click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates to gauge the effectiveness of your outbound campaigns.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) inflates open rates by preloading pixels, making open rates an unreliable metric. He suggests focusing on other metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue per email.
Email marketer from Email Uplers responds that with MPP impacting open rates, it's crucial to focus on metrics that indicate engagement and conversion, such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI). Also consider metrics like time spent viewing an email (if available via advanced tracking).
Email marketer from Smart Insights explains that marketers need to revise their key performance indicators (KPIs) to account for the reduced reliability of open rates as a key engagement metric. They suggest that marketers focus on click-throughs, conversions, and revenue attribution to measure email marketing success.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that MPP will lead to inaccurate open rates. They suggest shifting focus to metrics like clicks, website traffic, and conversions. They also recommend using UTM parameters to track campaign performance more accurately.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that Superhuman tracks opens via pixels (images) and works like anything else.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks responds that the information you're looking for will inform what might be the metric you should be focusing on.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that image loads have never accurately reflected whether people read your mail as some read without images and others load images without reading the email. Also points to 2 blog posts from 2010 and 2020.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains why marketers should stop obsessing about open rates and focus more on engagement metrics like clicks and conversions.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) changes how email opens are tracked, making open rates less reliable, and discusses the implications for email marketers. It mentions the false positive opens that MPP generates.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that depending on the AI agent, there might be two opens recorded per email: one for MPP and another for the AI agent, leading to inflated open rates.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that open rate probably isn't a good metric for "effective" - or maybe it is, but it depends on what "effective" means.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Mailchimp explains that email open tracking relies on a tracking pixel. MPP impacts the accuracy of this tracking by preloading images, which artificially inflates open rates. They suggest that users should supplement open rates with other metrics for a more accurate understanding of campaign performance.
Documentation from SparkPost answers that the changes made by MPP mean that marketers should rely more on click-through rate, conversion rates, and engagement data on their landing pages. Deliverability metrics are also helpful for getting a more rounded view of performance.
Documentation from Oracle Bronto explains that while open rates have traditionally been used to determine email engagement, changes in privacy policies make it harder to rely on them. Metrics such as click-through rate, conversion and revenue should be used to assess campaign engagement and success.
Documentation from Sendinblue shares that MPP can falsely report opens. They suggest monitoring metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), unsubscribe rates, and spam complaints to evaluate campaign effectiveness and overall deliverability.
Documentation from ActiveCampaign shares that it's important to focus on click-through rate to determine your campaigns effectiveness. Use list segmentation to personalize your messages to improve results.