Cold email open rate
Definition
Cold email open rate is the percentage of sent emails recorded as opened, measured by a tracking pixel. Since 2021 it has been unreliable, because Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads pixels automatically whether or not anyone read the email.
Cold email open rate is the percentage of sent emails recorded as opened, measured by a tracking pixel. Since 2021 it has been unreliable, because Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads pixels automatically whether or not anyone read the email.
Open rate used to be the first number on every cold email report. It shouldn't be on any of them now.
The tracking pixel is a tiny image loaded from the sender's server when the email is opened. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, introduced in 2021, preloads those images for every message on a device, so every email to an Apple Mail user registers as opened. Gmail's image proxy does something similar. The number went up for everyone and stopped meaning anything.
There's a second problem. The pixel itself is a deliverability cost. An image loaded from an unfamiliar domain is one of the things spam filters look at, and cold email lands better without one.
An example
Two agencies report on the same month. One says 68 percent open rate. The other says 22 positive replies from 400 leads. The first number is Apple's preloader. The second is 22 conversations. Only one of them is a result.
What to track instead
Positive reply rate per lead, bounce rate, spam complaint rate, and booked meetings. If someone shows you an open rate, ask them to show you the replies.
Related terms
Cold email reply rate · Email deliverability · Positive reply · Spam complaint rate
If you want this run for you, see our cold email agency.
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