I was reading an article in Email Insider the other day from Loren McDonald proposing we re-brand the much maligned “open rate” metric in favor of an “email render rate.” As much as those at my company and in the industry want to ignore the open rate, there are others who pay attention to it in the same way that advertisers gravitate to impressions. The render concept does more accurate reflect what happens to an image when it’s loaded in an email client reading pane.
I like the idea of devaluing the open rate in favor of stronger and more relevant metrics: click, unsubscribe or spam rate, transaction rate, gross profit, contribution or revenue… just to name a few.
Now if we can all just agree on what’s the new black.
