It’s time to ditch opens and clicks! Here’s why, plus 10 KPIs

By Alicia Torres, Senior Marketing Manager

The marketing world and beyond remains fixated, some might even say obsessed, with opens and clicks. Every month, we speak with countless marketers, and without fail, the same question emerges: “What should my opens and clicks look like?”

If you were hoping for a definitive answer, we’re afraid to say we won’t be giving one. It is and should be a deeper question than that when it comes to measuring email marketing success.

Opens and clicks are vanity metrics – valuable for discerning trends and trajectories rather than truly measuring engagement. Consider your own inbox habits for a second. How often have you overlooked that ‘high importance’ email? Or, perhaps you’ve marked all unread messages as ‘read’ just to tidy up those persistent notifications. It’s evident that the labels ‘read’ and ‘unread’ fail to accurately reflect our true priorities or interests.

Apple’s recent data privacy measures started in September 2021 with iOS 15, which introduced Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). MPP prevents email senders from tracking email opens by masking the recipient’s IP address. Before iOS 15, marketers relied on tracking pixels embedded in emails to detect open activity. But with MPP turned on, this changes how tracking pixels work. Instead of waiting for user interaction to load images, the Mail app now preloads them upon email arrival, regardless of user action.

This means that email senders can no longer accurately gauge email opens.

With Apple now commanding 56.32% of the email market share, it’s safe to say that open rates have been considerably skewed since. MPP is proving to be the real MVP in the realm of data privacy. Google and Yahoo’s recent email updates have also set out to improve the state of the inbox, putting privacy and user experience at the heart of their policies.

Non-human interaction.

It doesn’t stop there! While Apple’s impact on email opens is in the pursuit of data privacy, there are more malicious factors at play that are distorting open and click rates. Click fraud is skewing email metrics through the artificial generation of clicks on email links, designed to inflate engagement metrics.

This can be orchestrated by malicious actors, competitors, or even individuals seeking to disrupt a marketing campaign. Bot activity is having a similar impact, as automated software programs perform tasks on the internet which in turn, distort engagement metrics. Whether the bots are intentionally designed to generate fraudulent clicks, or employed by search engines to index content, both are knocking email metrics out of kilter.

So yes, it’s time look beyond opens and clicks. Although, the influence of data privacy, malicious activity and non-human interaction means that any email user who wants to see results cannot continue to use them as anything other than a benchmarking tool. But fear not! Here are 10 KPIs you can use to start reporting on performance accurately.

10 Alternative KPIs

Conversion Rate

Measure the percentage of email recipients who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or downloading content.

Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)

This ratio compares the number of clicks to the number of opens, providing insights into how engaging the email content is to those who open it.

Revenue Generated

Track the amount of revenue directly attributable to email campaigns, including both initial purchases and subsequent conversions from email-driven leads.

Web Activity

Monitor metrics such as time spent on the website, number of pages visited, or interactions with specific features or content to gauge overall engagement beyond email opens and clicks.

Lead Score

Develop a scoring system to quantify user engagement based on a combination of email interactions, website behaviour, and other relevant factors, allowing you to prioritise and personalise communications based on individual engagement levels.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Assess the long-term value of customers acquired through email campaigns by considering factors such as repeat purchases, average order value, and retention rates.

Subscriber Growth Rate

Measure the rate at which your email subscriber list is growing, indicating the effectiveness of your lead generation and acquisition strategies.

Email Deliverability

Monitor deliverability metrics like inbox placement rate, bounce rate, and spam complaints to ensure that your emails are reaching the intended audience and not being flagged as spam.

Segmentation Performance

Evaluate the effectiveness of your audience segmentation strategies by comparing performance metrics (e.g., open rates, click-through rates) across different segments of your email list.

Automation Journey Performance

Assess the performance of specific automated journeys or workflows, such as lead nurturing campaigns or abandoned cart emails, by tracking metrics like conversion rates and progression through each journey stage.

This list is full of genuine indicators of engagement, which will help you to report on campaign performance with confidence and accuracy. The next step might be to communicate this transition with those you report email performance to, so you can enhance the way your organisation measures success.

Getting Internal Buy-in

It’s important to educate the wider team, who are in contact with emails, about the shift in your KPI approach. Explain the changes in the digital landscape, including Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, and how this affects the reliability of traditional email metrics. You’ll need to clearly articulate the limitations and challenges associated with relying solely on these metrics, emphasising how they’re no longer an accurate representation of performance and true user engagement.

Presenting the alternative comes next, whereby you’ll need to demonstrate how your new chosen KPIs will offer more meaningful insights into your marketing efforts so you can set up your organisation for success. Weave your proposed alternative into broader business Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), such as revenue generation, customer acquisition, and long-term customer value, to underscore their relevance and importance.

Create a clear roadmap that makes the transition seamless, including the adjustments you’ll be making to measurement frameworks and reporting practices. The reporting shift should be an ongoing process, with regular monitoring and open dialogue to ensure your approach remains sustainable and agile.

For a more in-depth guide on email marketing, download our Email Marketing Playbook here.

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