Periodically, our customer support at Returnity fields a call from a customer alarmed that their open rates, the percentage of people who received the message and were tracked as having opened it, are not as high as they would like them to be. They want to purge their list of all people who haven’t “opened” at least one of their last 4 or 5 messages.

There are two issues with this misperception:

1) what might seem like a low open rate could very well be a high rate (Ask our expert for benchmark on your Industry).

2) the open rate trackers identify everyone who read the message.

Open rates counters are notoriously inaccurate. They track whether or not an email was opened by determining if a 1×1 pixel invisible image was displayed by a recipient. With email programs disabling image downloading as a default option and with more and more recipients looking at email in a preview pane or on Blackberrys, a lot more people actually read messages than open rate counters report. Think about it: if you can glean what you want out of a message without having to click the “Load Images” or “Enable Images” option, wouldn’t you just read the message, then move on about your business?

Years ago, when we started getting those requests to purge lists of people who didn’t open a message, we would oblige as requested. Inevitably, subscribers would call up our clients afterwards wondering why they aren’t getting their messages anymore so we would have to add them back. We no longer purge anyone for not being on the “who opened” list.

So, don’t jump to judgment about who is not on your “opens” report. Get the facts first. Ask yourself:

1. Is my open rate within my industry’s norm?
2. Are my messages relevant to my readers?
3. If I got an email whose subject line and content is just like the ones I send, would I open it?

While some people probably didn’t read your message (maybe even many people if your message is not relevant to them), don’t do anything drastic that could cut a good list.

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