Why I Stopped Chasing Open Rates (And What I Track Instead)

I used to be obsessed with open rates.

Every campaign, I’d refresh my stats like a gambler watching horses. 25%? Not bad. 30%? Celebration. 40%? I’d actually pat myself on the back.

I chased subject lines like they held the secrets to the universe. I tested emojis versus no emojis. I tested personalisation. I tested send times down to the minute. All in pursuit of that one number: open rate.

Then I spent years managing email campaigns for a major high street retailer—responsible for distributing half a million pounds worth of goods every single day. And later, working with a gambling brand generating a million pounds in monthly profit.

Somewhere in there, I realised something uncomfortable.

Open rates were a vanity metric. And I’d been chasing the wrong thing all along.

What open rates actually tell you

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: open rates are mostly a measure of curiosity. That’s it.

A high open rate means your subject line worked. It means people were intrigued enough to click. It does not mean they bought anything. It doesn’t mean they even read the email. It just means they opened it.

Worse, open rates have become increasingly unreliable. Apple’s privacy changes mean many opens get tracked that never happened. Image blocking, preview panes, bot scans—the number on your screen is at best a rough guess.

I remember sitting with the retail client, watching millions in revenue flow through campaigns with “mediocre” open rates. Meanwhile, campaigns with brilliant subject lines and fantastic opens were sometimes duds. The opens looked good. The bank account didn’t.

That’s when the penny dropped.

The campaign that changed everything

There was one campaign with the gambling brand that sticks with me.

We’d tested two subject lines. Version A had a 35% open rate. Version B barely scraped 22%. By conventional wisdom, A was the winner. Clear as day.

Except Version B made three times the revenue.

How? Because the people who opened Version B were the right people. They were the segment actually ready to engage. They read the email, clicked through, and converted. Version A attracted the curious—people who opened, glanced, and vanished.

I stared at the data for an embarrassingly long time. Then I started rethinking everything.

The numbers that actually matter

These days, I barely glance at open rates. Here’s what I watch instead.

1. Click-through rate (CTR)

Obvious, right? But watch how many people celebrate opens while ignoring clicks. Clicks mean someone was interested enough to take action. They wanted to know more. That’s real engagement.

I don’t just track overall CTR either. I look at which links got clicked. Heat maps of attention. That tells you what actually resonated.

2. Reply rate

This one’s gold. When someone replies to an email—even just to say “thanks” or ask a question—you’ve built something real. They’re not just a subscriber. They’re a human who engaged with another human.

I’ve closed deals, made friends, and learned more from replies than any dashboard ever showed me. If your emails never get replies, something’s wrong.

3. Conversion rate (obviously)

Did they buy? Did they opt in? Did they take the action you wanted? This is the only number that ultimately pays the bills.

I’d rather have a 10% open rate with 5% conversions than a 40% open rate with zero sales. But you’d be amazed how many marketers celebrate the first number and ignore the second.

4. Revenue per email sent

This is my favourite. Not “how many people opened” but “how much money did this email generate per person who received it?”

When you track that, everything changes. You stop optimising for subject lines and start optimising for offers, relevance, and timing. You start thinking like a business owner, not a newsletter publisher.

One exception

I’m not a total open-rate nihilist. There’s one place they still matter: trends over time.

If your open rates are steadily dropping over months, that’s a warning sign. It means you’re losing relevance. People are tuning out. Your list is going cold.

But day-to-day? Campaign-to-campaign? I’ve stopped caring. The noise is too high. The data too unreliable. The distraction too costly.

— Robert Carey

P.S. The gambling campaign I mentioned? Version B’s subject line was boring as hell. It just happened to be exactly what the right people wanted to hear. Food for thought.