Time to Rethink Email Marketing Success
For years, email marketers have relied on open rates and click rates as their north stars. If the numbers were high, the campaign was a success. If they were low, it was time to worry.
But the reality today is much more complicated, and if we’re honest, it has been for a while.
I look at open and click rates the same way political analysts look at polls…
There’s always a margin of error.
Between bots, security scanners, and the continued effects of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (which essentially marks many emails as “opened” even when no human ever sees them), the numbers we see in dashboards are often inflated or misleading. That “30% open rate” may not actually mean 30% of your audience read your email. That “5% click-through rate” might include automated link scanning behavior… not genuine interest.
And yet, despite all of this, we still see reports, meetings, and even performance reviews hinging on these vanity metrics.
But here’s the thing…
While open and click rates have serious flaws, they aren’t totally useless.
They’re still leading indicators.
If your open rate suddenly drops by 10 points, it might mean your deliverability is suffering. If your click rate spikes after a subject line or design change, it might hint at improved engagement. These metrics can signal whether you’re trending in the right direction, or if you need to dig deeper into potential issues.
The mistake comes when we treat them like gospel.
When we make open rates the headline number.
When we obsess over click rates without asking whether clicks actually mattered to the business.
That’s why, over time, I’ve evolved my approach to email reporting.
I’ve largely stopped highlighting open and click rates in my reports unless there’s clear, meaningful context that ties those metrics to a broader story.
Instead, I focus on the numbers that actually tie back to business outcomes:
Conversions (Did someone fill out a form or complete a meaningful action?)
Meeting bookings (Did the email drive interest that led to real conversations?)
Pipeline generation (Did the campaign help create revenue opportunities?)
These are the metrics that leadership cares about because they directly affect the bottom line.
Email is still one of the most powerful tools in marketing.
But how we measure its success has to evolve.
If we keep clinging to outdated KPIs, we risk missing the bigger picture: whether our emails are truly moving the business forward.
It’s not about throwing away open and click rates entirely. It’s about putting them in the right place. Secondary indicators, not primary success measures.
The real question every email marketer should be asking isn’t “How many people opened this email?”
It’s “What real-world action did this email drive?”
If we shift our focus to answering that question, we’ll build stronger strategies, better campaigns, and ultimately, a more meaningful relationship between email marketing and business growth.
