Why Open Rates Are Falling

Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 5 of May , 2008 at 11:02 am

It´s a problem that many email marketers have noticed in recent times, falling open rates. And, with lower open rates, you usually end up with fewer clickthroughs, resulting in fewer sales. But why is this happening? And does it really mean a drop in readership?

There are a few reasons why open rates may be dropping:

Blocked images. The majority of email clients these days don´t allow images to appear and often unless the images render, these emails don´t count toward your open rate.

Preview panes. Another newish addition to many email clients is the preview pane, where the reader can scan the email without actually opening it. Again, this can look bad in the stats, but doesn´t necessarily mean that no one is reading your emails.

Increased spam. With more and more spam, spam filters are having to get smarter about filtering. Unfortunately, that means that some of your non-spam emails will end up in the junk mail folder. This can be prevented by getting subscribers to add your email to their whitelist.

There are plenty of reasons that you could be seeing your open rates dropping, but these are the three most common ones. The first two you can´t do a lot about, but getting subscribers to whitelist you will definitely help with the last one. Remember that open clicks aren´t the only statistic that matters. Take a look at your sales and clickthroughs before getting too worried.

Website Design & Website Development Price Quotes – Compare and Save!

Category: Open and Click Rates

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

No comments yet.