Why are e-mail open rates declining?
Actually real e-mail open rates havent declined all that much over the past several years. What you see declining is the ability to measure and record open rates accurately. Heres why: Recent studies by Doubleclick and MailerMailer LLC show pretty much the same thing: measured open rates began to decline in late 2004 as computer users increasingly starting using e-mail programs that disable automatic image downloading which occurs by default in AOL 9.0, Gmail and Microsoft Outlook 2003. When images are not downloaded into an HTML message, the tracking image, which acts as a counter, cannot report when and if the e-mail was opened. As a result, an e-mail message that has actually been opened and read may not be reported as being opened and read if the recipient does not explicitly download the images. Q: How are AICPAs e-mail open rates holding up? A: At AICPA, our e-mail open rates are running two to two-and-a-half times the industry standard open rate of about 20 percent. Of course, w
