Are email marketing metrics lying to you?

For years, the open rate was used as a tool to measure interest. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough to guide decisions, justify results, and optimize campaigns. That balance has broken.

Today, the same metric mixes human behavior with automated privacy and security processes. The number still exists, but it no longer answers the question we’ve always asked of it. This article explains why the open rate has lost reliability and why insisting on its traditional interpretation creates more noise than clarity.

The classic tracking model no longer reflects behavior

Open tracking is based on a simple technical event, the loading of an invisible image (pixel). For a long time, this event was aligned with human reading behavior. When someone opened an email, images were loaded and the system recorded an open.

That alignment has been progressively destroyed. The introduction of proxies, caches, preloading, and protection layers has changed the relationship between the technical event and human action. The pixel still fires, but it no longer consistently represents a conscious decision by the user.

The problem is not the mechanism itself, but the context in which it now operates.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection and the loss of meaning of email opens

With Mail Privacy Protection, Apple made a clear decision: prevent tracking of reading behavior. To achieve this, it began automatically loading all images shortly after email delivery, regardless of whether the user actually opens the email.

In practice, this turns the open rate into a device distribution metric. The higher the percentage of Apple users in a database, the higher the apparent open rate will be, even if no one reads the message. The timing of email opens loses its meaning, and the distinction between ignored emails and read emails disappears entirely.

Opening an email stops being a choice and becomes a technical side effect.

Why Gmail should not be grouped into the same category

It is common to group Apple MPP and Gmail under the generic label of “proxies,” but this leads to analytical errors. Gmail’s image proxy works differently. Images are only loaded when the user actually opens the email. Google hides the real IP address and serves images from its own infrastructure, but it does not anticipate human behavior.

This means that, in Gmail, opening an email remains a psychological signal of interest. It is not perfect, because geolocation becomes imprecise, but it retains behavioral value. Treating Gmail and Apple MPP as equivalent destroys useful information.

The problem is not the data, it is the interpretation

The real issue arises when events of completely different nature are aggregated into a single KPI. Human email opens, automated opens, and security system opens all carry exactly the same weight in reporting.

The number is mathematically correct, but analytically weak. The metric stops explaining behavior and merely reflects technical architecture.

A curious paradox: worse measurement, better communication

There is a positive side effect that is rarely discussed. The same systems that distort metrics ensure that emails arrive visually flawless. Images load by default, layouts remain consistent, and the user experience improves.

The mistake is not accepting this evolution. The mistake is continuing to evaluate it using metrics designed for a context that no longer exists.

Conclusion

The open rate has not disappeared, but it has lost its status as a central metric. Today, it only makes sense when interpreted in light of the device, the context, and the objective of the campaign.

In the next article, we move into an even more sensitive territory, where even clicks no longer represent human intent.

Key takeaways

• Email opens are no longer synonymous with interest
• Apple MPP turns email opens into technical events
• Gmail retains behavioral value
• Metrics require contextual interpretation