Email Open Rate (and Why Apple MPP Broke It)
The share of recipients who opened a campaign — and why that number is less reliable than it used to be.
What it means
Open rate is the percentage of delivered emails that were recorded as opened. It is tracked with a tiny invisible image that loads when the email is viewed — which is also where the trouble starts.
Why it matters
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) pre-loads that tracking image for a big chunk of iPhone and Mac users the moment an email arrives, whether or not they ever actually read it. That inflates open rates and makes them unreliable as a measure of real engagement, especially if your list is Apple-heavy. Most senders now treat open rate as a rough signal and lean on click rate for anything that matters.
ask datanephew
Is my open rate actually good, or is it just Apple inflating it?
Ask datanephew to pull your open rate alongside click rate for the same campaign — a big gap between the two is a sign Apple's automatic opens are padding the number.
Which of my campaigns are genuinely engaging people?
Ask datanephew to rank recent campaigns by click rate instead of open rate — clicks require an actual person to act, so they hold up better under MPP.