Cold email open rates: what is a good one? The question stopped making sense in 2021.
A good open rate used to mean most people saw your subject line. Today the number cannot tell you that. Since Apple launched Mail Privacy Protection in September 2021, a large share of opens are machines loading the email, not people reading it. If you want to know whether cold email works, look at replies and meetings.
How an open gets counted
Your sending tool hides a tiny invisible image inside the email. When that image loads, the tool records an open. That is the whole trick. It records that an image loaded, not that a person read anything.
Why the number lies now
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection loads email content automatically, often before the person has opened the message. That fires the hidden image and records an open that no human made. Apple launched it in late September 2021, and people have to opt in, but plenty did. The industry calls these machine opens, and your tool cannot reliably tell them from real ones.
It cuts both ways. Some mail apps block images by default, so a real read never gets counted at all. Company security tools can also load emails before anyone sees them. The number is inflated for some people and missing for others, and you cannot tell which.
The cold email twist: the pixel can cost you
Open tracking adds a hidden image and often rewrites your links so they pass through a tracking domain. Many people who work on deliverability turn it off for cold email, because mail that looks like a marketing blast is easier for a filter to doubt. You end up paying for a number you cannot trust, and the price is how many emails reach the inbox. We don't use tracking pixels.
What to track instead
| The question | The number that answers it |
|---|---|
| Did it arrive? | Inbox placement and bounce rate |
| Did anyone care? | Reply rate and positive reply rate |
| Did it lead anywhere? | Meetings booked and meetings held |
| Is something broken? | Spam complaint rate. Google says keep it under 0.1% and never let it reach 0.3% |
The cold email metrics guide shows how to read these together.
When an open rate is still useful
Treat it as a smoke alarm, not a scoreboard. If you do track opens, compare each mailbox with its own history. A sudden drop to near zero on a mailbox whose opens were steady can mean its mail has started landing in spam. Even then, confirm it with a placement test before you act.
Stop comparing yourself to benchmarks
You will see claims like "cold email gets a 60% open rate". Ask how they filtered out machine opens. Almost nobody can answer, which means the number measures their tool, not your market.
Questions people ask
What is a good open rate for cold email?
There is no trustworthy number anymore. Machine opens inflate the result and blocked images deflate it. Judge your campaigns by replies and meetings instead.
Should I turn off open tracking for cold email?
Many senders do. It adds a hidden image, it cannot tell you who actually read the message, and it can make the mail look more like marketing. Replies tell you far more.
How do I know if my emails are going to spam without open rates?
Run inbox placement tests, watch bounce and spam complaint rates, and notice when replies drop off a sender that used to get them. For Gmail, Google Postmaster Tools shows your domain's spam rate directly.
The ladder of six numbers, and how to tell which one to blame.
Read →SPF, DKIM, DMARC and warmup, with a setup checklist.
Read →What is a good one? It depends on your industry. Here are ours.
Read →Want to see what we track instead of opens?