Open Rate
Open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened your email — once a top KPI, now degraded by privacy protections and AI summarizers and treated as a noisy signal in 2026.
What is open rate?
Open rate is (unique opens ÷ delivered emails) × 100. Historically the top-of-funnel metric for email; in 2026 it's much less reliable because Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches every tracking pixel (forcing a "100% open rate") and AI inbox summarizers open emails on the user's behalf.
Why it still matters (a little)
- Trend over time on the same audience can still indicate deliverability shifts
- Useful as a comparative metric when held constant per segment
- Subject-line A/B tests can still show relative differences (carefully read)
What to use instead
- Reply rate — the closest proxy for genuine interest in outbound
- Click-through rate — clicks are deliberate, less inflated by privacy tooling
- Meetings booked — the only metric that maps to revenue
How TexAu helps
Pipe click and reply events from your sequencer into TexAu and have AI Column score engagement intensity using the metrics that still mean something in 2026 — not opens.
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