It depends on the final objective of your email marketing campaign.
For me, personally, it does not have much validity, especially if we want to interact and know the tastes and preferences of the audience.
The open rate has long been considered a relevant indicator when measuring the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign.
The open rate is not able to tell us what happened, beyond whether or not the email was opened. We cannot know what happened once it has been opened.
Was it opened for immediate deletion? Was it actually read? What was read?
Perhaps it could be inferred that the email subject and sender generated the desired effect of being opened.
But what if you had the automatic email preview when you clicked on it and it was reported as opened, but was actually deleted immediately?
In short, many questions remain that do not help to know if the campaign was successful.
On the other hand, with the open rate we do not get any information in terms of reader interactivity with the email.
Clicks versus opens
In my opinion, the rate of clicks generated is a relevant metric when measuring effectiveness.
First, because it gives us real information about the degree of interactivity (interest) that the audience had with respect to the content of the email.
It tells us what interests whom. Everyone who clicked blue likes blue, everyone who clicked red likes red. Then, for the next campaign to be run, blue will be sent to those who chose blue.
This undoubtedly helps to know and to learn to know your audience, thus improving the effectiveness of your communications.
The click also helps people move forward in the communication process, moving from email to view to your website, to a landing page, in search of the desired conversion.
But it's not all black for the open rate.
While it has its drawbacks, the open rate has value, especially when it comes to generating evidence.
It has been studied that the subject of a message influences up to 80% in the decision of whether or not to open it. Given this, it is essential that you do not guess what will be the best subject to include in your email, but that you generate evidence.
And here comes the open rate. The best way to know which subject is more effective in a test is through the open rate.
For example, if you send to a first group of 500 emails a subject A, and to a second group of 500 emails a subject B, being both groups of homogeneous characteristics, and you find out that the open rate of the first group was 10% and that of the second group was 30%, it is very easy to know that subject B is the one to send to the whole base.
So, the open rate as a single indicator is not important to attribute the success or failure of a campaign, but as part of a set of metrics it is.
The opening rate represents the first ‘hurdle’ in approaching your ultimate goal.
If you see that a large group of people are not opening your messages, it may be necessary to test different issues: change the sender, or perhaps check if they are not being delivered.
After all, it is impossible to be read if it does not pass the first hurdle of the submission process.
