Why do my open rates look lower than in other tools?

Meisa shows two open rates: the raw rate, which counts every open like other tools do, and the real rate, which removes opens made by machines such as company security scanners and link pre-fetchers. The real rate is lower because those machines open email the moment it arrives, before any person sees it, and most tools count them as readers.

Raw and real, side by side

On a broadcast report, a sequence and Analytics, the open and click rates you see first are raw. Under them, click Show real opens and clicks to see:

• Raw: every open and click.
• Real: only opens and clicks made by people.
• How many raw opens were machines only, for example “156 of 342 raw opens were machines only (46%).”

If you compare tools, compare raw to raw. Use real when you want to know how many people actually read your email.

Why machines open your email

Many companies route incoming mail through a security gateway that opens every message and follows every link to check for threats. Some mail apps and privacy features load images in advance. To an email tool, each of these looks like an open, and sometimes a click on every link.

In Meisa’s own research, nearly three in ten emails that a dashboard called “opened” were opened by machines only, with no person ever reading them. Read the study: Bot vs human email opens.

How Meisa tells machines from people

Meisa scores every open and click using a few simple rules:

• Known scanner: the open or click comes from a known security-scanner or bot signature. Always a machine.
• Instant open: an open within the first 2 minutes after delivery. Treated as a machine. Real people rarely open that fast.
• Link sweep: 80% or more of the email’s links (at least 2) clicked within 3 minutes of delivery. A machine.
• Everything else counts as a person.

A person who opens later still counts. If a scanner opens the email first and the recipient opens it more than 30 minutes later, that later open is real. Meisa re-checks recent opens every night, so real numbers can move a little in the first day.

Gmail and Yahoo load images through their own image proxies when a person opens the email. Meisa counts those as real opens.

Other reasons open rates differ

• Tracking was off for that email. If open or click tracking was switched off for a send, the report shows Tracking off instead of a rate. See Set up open and click tracking.
• Mailgun’s own dashboard shows zero opens. Meisa tracks opens and clicks itself, so Mailgun sees none. That is expected.
• Images blocked. Opens are tracked with a tiny image, so a mail app that blocks images records no open even when someone reads the email. Clicks still count.

What to do with the real rate

• Use the real rate to compare subject lines and send times. It is closer to what people did.
• Judge engagement on real clicks and replies more than opens.
• Do not panic if your real rate is much lower than the raw one. A big gap usually means many of your contacts work at companies with security gateways, not that your email is failing.

Related articles

• Read your results: real opens vs raw opens, clicks and bounces
• Set up open and click tracking
• My emails are going to spam: what to check
• Schedule a broadcast and use phased (warm) sending