Email tracking advice from a computer scientist

Published: Sat, 11/14/20

Many suns ago, the great Jim Yaghi — a computer scientist who has helped Yours Caveman with my many technological snafus over the years — responded to one of my customers’ questions about open rates.

And, specifically, the futility of paying much attention to them.

In fact, I daresay his response exposes the whole “open rate” shtick quite nicely:

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there is no way to know your real actual open rate or numbers. Clicks are accurate, however. Some opens are implied from counting clicks (no one can click your email link without opening your email). More opens can be tracked by embedding a tracking image into the html version of an email (if you send in html). If and when the email is opened, the email client may only load the text part of the Message and ignore embedded images. This is most common for security, images are only loaded if the user asks to load them. If a user asks to load images, the tracking image is requested from the email sending server. It then can count that open. However many actual opens are missed because the original message is text only, not html, or the recipient only accepts text emails, or the email client does not load images by default and the recipient does not feel the need to load them for your message. Meaning, most actual opens without link clicki
are untrackable.

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Nobody wants to hear the following.

But focusing on these 3 things below, in this exact order, will do you far more good than flailing around always trying to goose up or even caring about "oPeN rAtEs!!!"

1. Be someone whose emails people on your list want to open

2. Write emails people on your list want to open

3. Write subject lines that are better than all the other ones in the inbox, making them more enticing to open

You likely won’t hear these being taught at any goo-roo seminars. Instead, you’ll hear chest-pounding about “test results!” using statistically irrelevant numbers & tricks to fool people that may have worked for the one teaching them, and may have only worked one time at that... and that may or may not work for you, your market, your list, your offer, your personality, your brand, and the list goes on.

But, do the 3 things above, and you’ll blow all those mopes right out of the water.

More:

Not long ago I did a long training about this subject and put it on my new mobile app.

(Not the old Ben Settle app that's in the app stores, this is a new one, just launched a few days ago)

To grab this training, go here:

https://learnistic.me/bjJF

Ben Settle