Opening up about open rates

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Open rates have been one of the key email metrics in the industry since companies started sending emails to customers, but with the introduction of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, they’re becoming redundant. Reenie Hollis, Director of Client Services, explains what’s happened and what the future holds for email marketing analytics.

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When we send an email on behalf of a client, the very first metric we check is "How many people opened it?". Lately, the answer to this question hasn’t been so straightforward.

Open rates have always been a bit murky (relying on downloaded images and tracking pixels) but with the latest email privacy update from Apple, we have gone from known unknowns to unknown unknowns.

Have you noticed your email open rates going up recently? It might be that you’ve cracked the secret of the perfect subject line or your brand awareness game is strong and you’ve built a loyal email base. But, more likely, it’s that the changes from Apple have automatically loaded your email content and counted as an open, when actually the recipient hasn’t even spotted it in their inbox.

So what has changed? Here is what Apple says: “Mail Privacy Protection hides your IP address, so senders can’t link it to your other online activity or determine your location. And it prevents senders from seeing if and when you’ve opened their email.”

For email marketers, this means that the emails you send will be routed through a proxy server before arriving in your recipient’s inbox. During this process, the email content and tracking pixels will be pre-loaded, and, sorry to say it, the end result is an artificially inflated open rate.

It’s time to let go of open rates – they are no longer useful. Instead, you need to focus on the audience your email is going to and how many unique prospective students clicked through to your website.

Make sure that you’re tailoring your content for the postgraduate audience. Think about their wants and needs but also the way they engage with universities and the tone they relate to. They’re a diverse group, which is great because it presents a lot of opportunities, but be sure you have your USPs and brand nailed down to make the most of it.

Talking postgraduate recruitment, if you’re using external companies to target audiences, then ask questions about their audiences that are available for you to tap into. Make sure they’re relevant, but also engaged. Our email audience is built from a custom-selected prospective postgraduate student audience, all of whom have signed-up within the last 12 months. This means that our email audience are more likely to engage with our content because they’re active. They haven’t been sat in the database for years, they’re still looking for information on starting a Masters and/or PhD. We can also segment our audience by discipline, age, nationality and location filters to get your message to the right people.

There is no point relying on a click-bait subject line, spam folders are savvy to it, and so are postgraduate students. Refocus your energy on including a clear, effective CTA, and track your links. If you have software that does that for you, that’s great, otherwise use technology such as Google Tag Manager or CT tags (that’s what we use) and make sure you’ve got your dashboards ready in Google Analytics. Do some tests beforehand so you’re confident everything is recording and working and then get ready to attribute clicks your email marketing.

Remember, the goal of email has never really been just about getting opens. It’s more about getting in front of an audience and making them do something such as clicking through to a website, and that hasn’t changed.

If you are interested in finding out about our Targeted Email Newsletters, or have any questions, please get in touch with your Account Manager or email [email protected] or call +44(0) 114 268 4940.

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