Open rates are an important metric in email marketing.
They can show how many subscribers have opened your email, helping you understand the success of your email campaign. This knowledge can be vital for your future email strategy and also for managing your list.
How does ConvertKit know if someone opened an email?
We embed an invisible image (tracking pixel) into the footer of your emails. Once that image/pixel is loaded, we log the email as opened.
Your open rate is calculated by dividing the subscribers who opened your email by the number of subscribers who received the email:
👉 Open rate = (total unique opens ÷ total recipients) x 100
This creates the percentage you can see in your broadcast and sequence reports.
An average of this can be seen on your subscribers page, which you can find by clicking on the Grow tab in your account's top navigation bar.
What is considered a good open rate?
Open rates can vary from sender to sender. However, here are some general thresholds you can use to measure your open rate performance:
Open Rate | Likely Sender Reputation |
0% – 15% | Low |
16% – 25% | Medium |
26% – 35% | High |
36+% | Very High |
If your open rates are continuously below 10%, we strongly recommend that you clean your list.
You can also check the recommended practices by our Deliverability team, as low open rates can damage your sending reputation in the long run.
Are open rates always 100% accurate?
Unfortunately, open rates are not always accurate. Here are a few things that can impact the accuracy of your open rates.
If your subscriber has images blocked in their email system, the tracking images mentioned at the beginning won’t be loaded. This might happen due to firewall settings as well.
Spam filters can also automatically open emails before your subscriber has any chance of opening them. In this case this can elevate your open rates even if some subscribers might not open your email.
If your email is too large (over 100 KB) your message might be clipped, and this will also block the tracking image from being loaded. When an email is clipped, the bottom part of the email won’t load automatically.
For more information on open rates and other important metrics you can listen to our Deliverability Defined podcast here and also check out the linked article below! 👇