Yes, the utility of the open rate is often misunderstood. e.g. if you want to track revenues, you should rather track conversions with Google Analytics (integr

Yes, the utility of the open rate is often misunderstood. e.g. if you want to track revenues, you should rather track conversions with Google Analytics (integrate the tags in the links within your email). The #1 use of the open rate is to measure how reactive your email subscribers are, and detect deliverability issues. e.g. if your open rate drops for all the @hotmail destination, you know have an issue with this particular webmail. Contrary to the click rate, the open rate is not an "absolute metric" because for example, some email clients would not load the images even if the recipient read your email. But still, it's very useful as it's the variations that matter.