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Open Rates Feel Reassuring, But Often Mislead.
Most teams treat open rates like gold. But with privacy changes and inbox pre-loads inflating them, open rates are now creepy vanity mirrors that reflect nothing about intent. You need metrics that show decisions, not passive delivery. This issue unpacks the psychology behind each metric and how to interpret signals that predict real buyer actions.
Here’s the idea: The Metrics That Predict Purchase Signals
Open rates once measured attention. Today, they often just measure Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection preloads and bots. Real buyer intent shows up in action-based metrics: clicks, conversions, revenue per email, and downstream engagement. These metrics reveal effortful decisions - the psychological “I want this” moment - not surface-level exposure.
Teardown
What Works:
Teams that shifted focus to click-to-open, conversion, and revenue per email saw clearer ties to purchase behaviour.
Segments based on behaviour (e.g., repeat clickers) outperformed segments based on opens alone.
What Fails:
Over-investing in open rates led to optimization based on subject lines without regard for action. That fails every time. And treating inflated open stats as engagement led to misguided content decisions.
Why:
Open rates don’t require an effortful choice from a subscriber anymore. Clicks, conversions, and revenue require intentional engagement - a psychological step toward buying.
Framework
Things to Consider:
Does the metric require effortful action from the user?
Does it correlate with revenue or pipeline?
Is privacy noise reducing its signal quality?
Decision Path:
Measure behaviour requiring intent (clicks, conversions). Use open rates only as a subject line/brand health signal. And tie metrics to business outcomes (e.g., revenue per email).
Trade-Offs:
Here’s the thing to understand about the current email landscape. Clicks give you engagement, but not every click converts. Conversion rate ties to revenue but needs consistent tracking. Revenue per email is ideal but requires accurate attribution. Full funnel gives you a better picture of what is actually happening in your email ecosystem.
Outcome Focus
Human: Subscriber psychology matters. Action metrics reflect choice, not passive exposure.
Business: Revenue, not opens, predicts pipeline and forecast accuracy.
Measurement Prompts
Which metric tracks real action rather than passive exposure?
Where does intent show up first in your customer journey?
Metrics:
Click-through rate (CTR), Click-to-open rate (CTOR)
Conversion rate
Revenue per email/revenue per subscriber
List growth and engagement over time
Ethics Check
Tracking clicks and conversions must respect consent and privacy. Don’t rely on invasive trackers or inference that breaches user trust. Opt-in signals and transparent data use strengthen long-term intent measurement.
Reflect and Apply
What metric currently drives your decisions? Is it action-based or passive?
How do privacy updates (like Apple MPP) distort your engagement stats?
What system do you have for tracking revenue per email and tying it to buyer intent?
The Future of Shopping? AI + Actual Humans.
AI has changed how consumers shop by speeding up research. But one thing hasn’t changed: shoppers still trust people more than AI.
Levanta’s new Affiliate 3.0 Consumer Report reveals a major shift in how shoppers blend AI tools with human influence. Consumers use AI to explore options, but when it comes time to buy, they still turn to creators, communities, and real experiences to validate their decisions.
The data shows:
Only 10% of shoppers buy through AI-recommended links
87% discover products through creators, blogs, or communities they trust
Human sources like reviews and creators rank higher in trust than AI recommendations
The most effective brands are combining AI discovery with authentic human influence to drive measurable conversions.
Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified by it.
Tip of the Week
Stop chasing open rates as a success metric. Treat them as a signal of brand intrigue, not intent.
Practical Focus
The Open Rate Mirage
Once upon a time, open rates told us something useful. They hinted at curiosity. They suggested attention. They gave marketers a comforting sense of control.
Then privacy features showed up and politely torched that illusion.
Today, an “open” often means an email client preloaded a pixel while the human was still making coffee. And yet, teams still celebrate inflated numbers like they’re proof of intent. This is how dashboards become bedtime stories.
The danger isn’t that open rates are inaccurate. It’s that they feel emotionally satisfying. They reward surface-level effort and distract from harder questions about behaviour, motivation, and actual buying signals.
Real intent shows up when someone does something that costs effort. Clicking. Reading. Buying. Replying. Anything that requires a decision.
The open rate mirage teaches us the wrong lesson: that attention is passive. Buyers prove otherwise every day.
Additional Resources for Open Rate Mechanics
🛍️ Retailers sent 42 billion emails over Black Friday/Cyber Monday, many with hidden trackers that compromise privacy and inflate engagement measures. This highlights why raw opens are unreliable.
📊 Marketers are pushing marketing analytics to make sense of real engagement and business impact across channels.
🦾 Experts argue email is evolving with AI and owned audiences, but engagement metrics must evolve too.
📥 Hiring trends show measurable email results (revenue lifts) outpull vague “managed campaigns” on resumes.
🪙 Win-back campaigns depend more on conversions and loyalty behaviour than opens alone.
🔋 Tech stacks mean nothing if no one reads or acts on emails - clicks and conversions matter.
💻 New email tools and software reviews keep the inbox ecosystem competitive.
📱Brands integrate SMS with email to capture cross-channel intent signals.
❤️ KPI fundamentals remain crucial even beyond email.
📨 Despite debates about mass email, it still has a role - but not without good metrics.
A Final Note
Clicks Tell Intent
Open rates used to tell us something about attention. Now they mostly tell us about inbox technology. If you want to understand buyer intent, you have to look for signals that require effort and choice.
Clicks, conversions, revenue per subscriber, and downstream behaviour show where real decisions are happening. Measure what reflects human action, not what flatters your dashboard.
Core focus: Buyer intent shows up when subscribers make choices, not when they passively “open.” Focus on action over exposure to measure what truly matters in email marketing.
Until next Tuesday,
Practical marketing psychology for email and lifecycle.
Ships every Tuesday.