Marketing & agency
Email Open Rate Calculator
Works open rate, which privacy features have made unreliable.
Result
Open tracking has become unreliable since Apple Mail Privacy Protection began pre-loading images, which inflates opens. Treat open rate as a rough trend indicator and judge campaigns on clicks and bookings.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Opens divided by delivered messages. Opens are detected by a tracking image loading, and privacy features that pre-fetch or proxy images register opens that never happened, which inflates the figure for the affected share of an audience and breaks comparison across time and across audiences.
What moves the number
- Share of the audience using privacy-protecting mail clients.
- Subject line and sender recognition.
- Deliverability, which precedes opening.
- Image loading behaviour in each client.
Where this one goes wrong
Open rate is no longer a measurement in the way it once was, and a rise after privacy features were introduced reflects the measurement changing rather than the audience, which means any comparison across that period is invalid. Use click behaviour instead. Deliverability is the metric that actually matters upstream, since a message in a spam folder cannot be opened and the open rate gives no indication that it happened.
Before you quote
- Treat open rate as directional at best, not a measurement.
- Use clicks and downstream actions to judge engagement.
- Monitor deliverability separately.
Questions
About this calculator
Why did my open rate jump?
Most likely a change in how opens are counted rather than in your audience. Privacy features that pre-fetch images register opens that never happened, which inflates the figure and invalidates comparisons across the period they were introduced.
What should I measure instead?
Clicks and the actions that follow them, since those require a deliberate act. Open rate remains directional for comparing two subject lines sent to the same audience at the same time, and little more than that.
Does a low open rate mean bad content?
Not necessarily; it can mean poor deliverability, which precedes opening entirely. A message in a spam folder cannot be opened, and the open rate gives no indication that is what happened, so deliverability needs separate monitoring.
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How to use this calculator
- Emails sent. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5,000.
- Bounced. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 140.
- Unique opens. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 1,210.
- Unsubscribes. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 22.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to open rate (of delivered), and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Emails sent | 5,000 |
| Bounced | 140 |
| Unique opens | 1,210 |
| Unsubscribes | 22 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Open rate (of delivered) main result | 24.90% |
| Delivery rate | 97.20% |
| Bounce rate | 2.80% |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.45% |
24.90% of your 4,860 delivered emails were opened, with a 2.80% bounce rate and 0.45% unsubscribing.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only emails sent, this is what happens to open rate (of delivered). It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Emails sent | Open rate (of delivered) |
|---|---|
| 2,500 | 51.27% |
| 3,750 | 33.52% |
| 5,000 example above | 24.90% |
| 7,500 | 16.44% |
| 10,000 | 12.27% |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Emails sent
- A number, between 0 and 100000000, starting at 5,000.
- Bounced
- A number, between 0 and 100000000, starting at 140.
- Unique opens
- A number, between 0 and 100000000, starting at 1,210.
- Unsubscribes
- A number, between 0 and 1000000, starting at 22.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Open rate (of delivered) | The headline result. A percentage. |
| Delivery rate | A percentage. |
| Bounce rate | A percentage. |
| Unsubscribe rate | A percentage. |
Attribution is the weak link
Return and cost-per-lead figures depend on knowing which enquiries came from which source, and most home-services businesses do not track that reliably. If the source data is guesswork, so is the return.
Keep going
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