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To clarify what an 'open' is in terms of this post, it's when the recipient opens an email and has remote images load or clicks a trackable link. That's the on

To clarify what an 'open' is in terms of this post, it's when the recipient opens an email and has remote images load or clicks a trackable link. That's the only way you can be sure an email has been opened. If you open an email but don't load images and don't click links, then it hasn't been 'opened' in the eyes of the sender. So, for instance, folks who open and delete promotional mailings without loading images don't count as opening those emails. Basically 'open' doesn't mean what you think it means in terms of the way you use your email client. The same way 'delivered' doesn't mean what you'd think it means. You, as a user, would think it means delivered to your inbox. It doesn't. It means it was delivered to the mail server. At that point, it could go in your inbox, your 'promotions' tab in gmail, your junk/spam folder, or be automatically deleted using a set of rules on your server/email client (bayesian, rbls, etc). So, when email sending providers talk about delivery rates, that's what they really mean. They have no idea if even the subject of the email was even seen by the recipient unless that recipient either opens the email and loads the remote images or clicks on a trackable link.

D-Coder 13y ago
True, but probably not relevant to this artice. The "read" vs "loaded images/clicked link" ratio is probably the same before and after, so its exact meaning isn't important. But thanks for the clarification.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  I figured I'd clarify the terminology as some folks in the comments here were saying things like they used to open up multiple mails and delete them as opposed to now where they just select and delete them within the Promotions tab without opening them. I wanted to ensure folks knew that this wouldn't affect the numbers the way they were expecting unless it was all from senders you'd specifically allowed remote images for.
- morsch 13y ago
  It does call into question the representativity of the findings, though. For example, people who always show external images are overrepresented; the influence of the new design on open rates of other users is not predicted reliably. Or, from another angle, I am more likely to load external images in emails that are important to me. The influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are important to me (which get counted) is probably different from the influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are NOT important to me (and that don't get counted even if I open them).

D-Coder 13y ago

True, but probably not relevant to this artice. The "read" vs "loaded images/clicked link" ratio is probably the same before and after, so its exact meaning isn't important. But thanks for the clarification.

JohnTHaller 13y ago
I figured I'd clarify the terminology as some folks in the comments here were saying things like they used to open up multiple mails and delete them as opposed to now where they just select and delete them within the Promotions tab without opening them. I wanted to ensure folks knew that this wouldn't affect the numbers the way they were expecting unless it was all from senders you'd specifically allowed remote images for.
morsch 13y ago
It does call into question the representativity of the findings, though. For example, people who always show external images are overrepresented; the influence of the new design on open rates of other users is not predicted reliably. Or, from another angle, I am more likely to load external images in emails that are important to me. The influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are important to me (which get counted) is probably different from the influence of the new design on the open rate of emails that are NOT important to me (and that don't get counted even if I open them).