As we enter a season filled with ghosts and ghouls, we’re raising another equally infamous entity from its crypt: open rates.

It’s been a year since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) rolled out, and fundraisers and marketers mourned the death of one of our favorite email metrics. However, with a year of data behind us MWD is conjuring a provocative notion; while open rates may not be fully alive – they are almost certainly undead. Here’s how you can still use this zombified metric in your fundraising program.  

First things first, as fundraisers it’s important to acknowledge that open rates have never been 100% accurate – even in our heyday of referencing them. Autoresponders, spam filters, and other inbox providers’ protocols have always skewed open rates to some degree.

Then iOS15 hit the scene in September of 2021 and made this mysterious metric even more complex.

Today we’re faced with an array of open rate data. Some platforms use algorithms meant to weed out automatic opens – those opens that happen within a millisecond of your email hitting the inbox which are related to MPP rather than an actual user excitedly receiving your message. Others don’t make the distinction, resulting in open rates that are monstrously inflated.

So if open rates weren’t as reliable as we like to believe pre-MPP, how can we use this metric in a post-iOS15 world where they’re most assuredly skewed?

At MWD we suggest using open rates as a general compass rather than a road map. In other words, open rates likely don’t help determine the success of an individual email’s content, call to action, or overall fundraising success, they are still useful directionally, providing important information about your audience’s trends and the health of your email program over time.

Using your own data as a benchmark will help you isolate peaks and valleys that may help you identify stand-out messages as well as potential deliverability issues. Using open rates directionally means determining your baseline and aiming for improvement or taking action when they are lower than normal.

And just what is normal in a world where emails are opened automatically almost as if by ghosts? It depends on your file. Some organizations may have actually seen their open rates decline slightly after MPP if they’re using a platform that removes automatic opens and the rest of their file isn’t as engaged. Others saw their open rates soar to above 50% for some messages. No matter where your emails fall on this spectrum a few things remain true:

  • Upward trends are still positive. A year into MPP, we’re unlikely to see new spikes in open rates as your audience has already opted in or ignored this new feature. So if you see you see your open rates increasing – pat yourself on the back for a job well done and break out the fun-sized candy bars.
  • Similarly, downward trends are still negative – although there are more factors to take into account if you see your open rate trend line decreasing. Consider a list clean to remove or update bad emails. Between honey pots, spam traps, bogus, and yes even zombie email addresses, as much as 20-30% of your contact data could turn evil each year.
  • Whether your ESP removes automatic opens or not, shoot for email open rates above 15%. Anything lower could be a sign of a more substantial deliverability problem.

MPP forced marketers and fundraisers to make major changes. The way we evaluate activity (or lack thereof), our ability to use real-time animations, or re-send messages to non-openers all had to shape-shift in the wake of iOS15. However, reports of open rate’s death are greatly exaggerated. In honor of Halloween, we’re here to resurrect them from the tomb.

About the author: Zoe Clarke is a Senior Account Executive at Mal Warwick Donordigital. She has eight years of experience in leading best-in-class fundraising and communication campaigns. Zoe believes in challenging the status quo and investing in creative and inspiring new fundraising tactics to engage donors, shape communities, and build a better world.