Here is How You Can Know
How Many People Actually Open
Your Emails!

Knowing how many people actually open the emails you send has a ton of benefits:

  • It can help you know whether a particular subject line is effective in a promotion
  • It can let you know how many of your subscribers are REALLY subscribers
  • It can help a newsletter operator sell more advertising
  • It can help you pinpoint why a particular promotion did well—or not so well
  • It serves as a “real” measure of one mailer to another

It’s an important statistic to have.

Here is a summary of how you can begin tracking open rate for your own promotions:

What is Open Rate?

Open rate simply refers to the number of emails you have sent are actually opened. For example, let’s say a newsletter is emailed to 1,000 people, but only 300 actually open the newsletter. The open rate for that newsletter for that mailing is 30%

How Can I Know My Own Open Rate

The easiest way to track open rate is to send out HTML emails with an “image” tag. While some ISP providers are now “blocking” image tags, this is still a great way to get a handle on how many of your subscribers are opening your mailings.

Here’s how it works:

You place a small piece of code into your email which is invisible to the reader, but which points to a page on your site. It would look like this:

<img src=” http://www.YourSite.com/count.html “ border=0 height=1 width=1>

This actually creates a 1 pixel by 1 pixel image on the HTML email, virtually invisible to the reader.

The count page is simply a “blank” page somewhere on your site.

Every time someone opens this email, your web statistics will record one “hit” to your “count.html” webpage. By looking at the server logs for your site, you can see how many “user sessions” were recorded for the page “count.html”. That number is the number of people who opened the email.

Other ways to track your open rate

If you don’t send HTML emails or you don’t want to start using image tags, some list management companies will track this for you. The list company we use will track open rates as well as click-thru rates (the number of people who click on your offers.):

http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/ar

Some Warnings about Tracking Open Rate

While is it perfectly fine to track open rates using an image tag, there are a couple things which can get you into trouble:

  • Don’t track open rates by email or user number

    Most people feel it is a violation of their privacy to have your open rate counter page actually record personal data about them. What this means is you shouldn’t be creating a list of “people who open my emails”—avoid the temptation.

  • Don’t use “Return Receipts”

    If you are sending out a bulk mailing, never set it to request a return receipt—it will alienate your readers.


Tracking your open rate can give you a good handle on your business. Use it wisely and you should be able to see your profits multiply.



If you have any questions or problems, let us know!

We don't succeed until you succeed!

Service@All-In-One-Business.com
All-In-One-Business.com
956 South Highway 25W
Williamsburg, KY 40769
USA
(423)784-6300