Are Your Open Rates Reliable?

When email marketing first started, plain text was used, deliverability was good (this was before spam), recipients were hungry for information, which in turn meant that response rates were good…however, as time went on and spam became prolific, measures were taken by ISP's to reduce spam. Throughout all of this, email marketing increased its usefulness, has become more sophisticated, catering not only to users needs for personalized emails, but also to marketers more exacting requirements for improved and accurate reporting.

Now, after years of relying upon open rates to determine the success of an email campaign (HTML that is, not text), many reports are now stating that open rates have declined. Is this then the first sign of the demise of email marketing? I do not believe it is. Doubleclick's Report shows a downward trend in open rates but also that click through's are holding their own.

So, why the low open rates? Well, there are a couple of possible reasons for this:
1: Image Blocking
2: Being delivered to the Junk Mail Folder
3: Loss of interest

1: Image Blocking:

Most email marketing software track opens using a clear 1 x 1 pixel gif that counts the email as being opened when the image loads from the server.

However, as a preventative measure to try and stop spam, image blocking was introduced by most email software programs and free web mail providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo. By blocking images it prevent spammers from knowing whether the recipient has opened the email, which therefore means the address is a valid address and active. It also stops pornographic images from loading.

This has had a major affect on how effective the open rates of email marketing now are. In October 2005, Ezemail conducted a survey which asked the question: How often do you download images? The results below show the percentage of people that download images (if their images are blocked by their email client/ISP). As you can see, you can't trust that they will download the images and so this in turn means that you can't place as much value of an open rate as you used to. A click through rate is a much more accurate and reliable statistic.

Frequency	UK %	AUS/NZ %	USA/CAN %
Always	14.3	16.7	2.3
Often	42.1	41.7	35.9
Sometimes	42.2	33.3	44.1
Never	1.4	8.3	17.5

Source: Ezemail Image Blocking Survey October 2006

2: Being sent to the Junk mail folder:

The emails are being sent to the junk mail folder, where images are not shown nor recorded as the text version generally is only displayed. According to a report by Epsilon, only 55% of users regularly check their junk mail for legitimate emails. False positives are still a big issue, with many legitimate emails ending up in the Junk mail folder. According to the same report, nearly 1/3rd of users claim that requested emails from trusted sources appear in the junk mail folder.

3: Loss of interest:

Of course, the decline in open rates cannot be exclusively attributed to blocked images & junk mail - there is also another potential contributing factor - loss of interest by the reader. Readers are becoming more and more selective with what they are reading, as more and more companies are realizing the value of newsletters and e-marketing, there is more for a reader to choose from -and the bar has been lifted. So it is imperative to deliver to the inbox timely and relevant information.

If a preview pane is not being used (see chart below), then the reader users 2 factors to determine whether they will open the email: From Name (i.e whether they trust you) and Subject Line (is it information they look forward to or has got an interesting subject line?). And yes, if images are enabled, and the email is previewed in the preview pane, then it counts as an open.

Additionally, they may have already enlisted the use of the 'block sender' tool. This is done instead of unsubscribing. It appears that the email clients and ISP's have realized what many companies haven't , that it is all about the users needs. I believe that if the recipient wants to unsubscribe, let them and make it easy for them to do so. All too often, it seems that for a recipient to unsubscribe, they have jump hurdles, all for the privilege of not being sent any further communcations. This has resulted in the user taking the easy option out and hitting 'block sender'.

Best Practice

Web Link: Be sure to have a link directing them to a web version of the email. i.e 'If you are having trouble reading this email, click here'. This link in turn replaces the open rate and is used both by recipients receiving text emails as well as those with blocked images.
Consider Design: Take design into consideration and don't have the preview pane window being taken up completely with an image. You need to utilize this space with headlines or content teasers in order to induce the reader to open the email and contuinue reading. This is what the recipient uses to decide whether or not they will open the email.
Incentivise to Whitelist: First, you need to incentivise them to add you, the sender to their address book, thereby overriding the block their email program has on images. The only way you can do this is by providing timely, good value information/products which they look forward to receiving. Being added to their contact lists ('whitelisted') has a 2 fold affect, as not only are the images shown, but you are also more likely to avoid the junk mail box.
Incentivise to Open: However, if they have not added you to their contact list, then you need to incentivise them to open and read your email. Again, you can do this by having 'must read' information within the preview pane
Add Alt Tags: Be sure to add Alt tags to your images and when possible make them sounds appealing, this way the reader may download the images as they're keen to see the image that you have just described. Be aware though that many ISP's and email clients do not show the alt tags if images are disabled.(see below chart)
Test design without images: Nothing will turn readers off more quickly than a badly formatted email. If the images are blocked and your design is completely reliant upon images you may want to think about re-designing your email.
Minimal Images: Have enough images to make an impact & to support your branding, but don't have too many, and certainly don't rely upon images.
Test Links: For every image link, try and have a corresponding text link.
Use Click through's: Click through's are a much more reliable way of measuring the success of a campaign. Design your campaign around gaining click through's
Provide what the reader wants: Provide timely and relevant information.
Unsubscribe Method: Utilize an easy to unsubscribe function rather than a manual or complicated process, in order to avoid being 'blocked', as this will affect the accuracy of your statistics.

Email Clients/ISP's which Block Images

	Outlook 2000/XP	Outlook 2003	Outlook Express	Yahoo	Gmail	Hotmail	AOL Versions 6.0-9.0
External images are blocked by default	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Recipient controls image blocking settings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Recipient clicks link to enable message's images	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Images enabled if sender is in recipient's address book	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Alt tags displayed when images disabled	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Ability to preview	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No

Kath Pay is Marketing Director of Ezemail, an innovative company that provides comprehensive email marketing solutions including a fully re-brandable Agency solution. For more information on how easily email marketing can be implemented, please contact Kath at kath@ezemail.com