How-to: Open Tracking for Email Marketing

As email marketing evolves, relying on open tracking as a key metric is becoming increasingly problematic. Here’s why and what you can do about it.

Key Issues with Open Tracking

1. Inaccuracy: Open tracking, which relies on invisible tracking pixels, has always been flawed as a result of "Machine Opens". With the introduction of iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), tracking pixels are often auto-loaded by the email client, leading to inflated and increasingly-unreliable open rates.

2. False Engagement: In addition to Open Rates being unreliable, using open tracking to identify active recipients can result in misclassifying contacts as engaged. This can lead to targeting these contacts with content for active subscribers instead of re-engagement content, and mailing inactive contacts too frequently. This can increase unsubscribe rates and spam complaints.

3. Deliverability Risks: Mislabeling inactive contacts as active, over-mailing, and sending the wrong content can harm your sender reputation. This is particularly risky with filtering rules from Gmail and Yahoo rolled-out in early 2024, which are stricter with senders who consistently target inactive recipients.

What to Look For

• Set up Google Postmaster Tools (GPT): GPT covers over 60% of most mailing lists, is accurate and free to use. It shows trends and current values of your sender reputation at Domain and IP level, spam complaints and domain authentication. Setup steps linked here.
• Declining Campaign Performance: Any of the following indicate an issue with inactive data:
  • Steady downward trends in opens and clicks, especially with Google since February 2024
  • One domain having significantly and suddenly different click rates that the others
  • A sudden Increased bounces
  • From GPT: spam complaints over 0.3%, domain reputation falling to Medium or Low
• Falling opens, steady clicks: This is seen especially in Google and Microsoft domains, indicating that the active recipients are still receiving emails to the inbox, while emails to inactive users are being filtered into the junk folder. The fall in opens comes from the reduction in "machine opens"; the false engagement explained above.

Recommendations

1. More Accurate Tracking and Segmentation: Track link clicks, website or app activity, and purchase history to get a more accurate picture of engagement; creating segments:

   1. active contacts

   2. inactive purchasers

   3. inactive non-purchasers

2. Active and Inactive Targeting: These segments allow:

   1. more targeted campaigns for currently-engaged users;

   2. re-engagement of customers, and

   3. suppression or deletion of long-term inactive contacts with no purchase history.

3. Control Frequency: Active contacts should receive more campaigns than inactive ones. As the time since the last engagement increases, the email frequency should decrease. Long term inactive contacts should either be moved to multi-channel re-engagement, or unsubscribed/deleted, depending on their customer lifetime value

4. Monitor Trends: Monitor trends to identify issues early and adjust your strategy before they impact deliverability.

Summary

Relying solely on open tracking is risky in today’s email technology landscape. By adopting more accurate engagement metrics and regularly reviewing your segmentation strategies, you can maintain better list health, improve campaign results, and protect your sender reputation.