Glossary entry
Open rate
The percentage of recipients who opened the email — historically measured via tracking pixels, now increasingly unreliable thanks to Apple Mail Privacy Protection (auto-loads images for everyone). Industry medians cite 30-60% open rates; the real numbers are lower and noisier than the dashboards say. Use open rate as a directional signal at best; trust reply rate and positive reply rate for actual decision-making.
01Definition
TLDR
The percentage of recipients who opened the email — historically measured via tracking pixels, now increasingly unreliable thanks to Apple Mail Privacy Protection (auto-loads images for everyone). Industry medians cite 30-60% open rates; the real numbers are lower and noisier than the dashboards say. Use open rate as a directional signal at best; trust reply rate and positive reply rate for actual decision-making.
02Why it matters
The metric most SDR managers still optimize for, and the metric most likely to mislead.
03Example
Worked example
Sequencer reports 52% open rate; Apple MPP inflates that by ~20 points. Real open rate is closer to 35%.
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