An open is no longer the same thing as attention

If your email platform reports a healthy open rate but clicks, replies or sales are flat, the dashboard may be telling you something real. It may also be telling you that tracking pixels were loaded without a person meaningfully reading the message.

That problem started before AI inboxes. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection downloads remote email content in the background, regardless of whether the recipient engages with the message. That can register an open when nobody has read the email. Apple describes this as a privacy feature designed to prevent senders from learning when a message was opened. (apple.com)

AI inboxes add a different complication. Gmail can generate an AI Overview that summarizes a long thread and creates reminders from it. Outlook’s Copilot can scan an email thread and place a summary at the top of the conversation. The recipient may therefore understand the gist of a message through an assistant before deciding whether to open, scroll through or click anything. (support.google.com)

The practical answer is straightforward: email open rates are still useful as a directional signal, but they are no longer strong evidence of human attention. Treating them as a performance outcome is now a measurement error.

Open rate versus click rate: what each can still tell you

The current numbers are not useless. They are easy to overread.

Industry benchmarks show why marketers still look at opens. The DMA’s 2025 benchmarking report recorded an average open rate of 35.9% and a unique click rate of 2.3%. Higher Logic’s association benchmark, based on approximately 1,500 organizations and more than 2 billion emails sent during 2025, reported a 33.54% average open rate and a 2.68% average click rate. (dma.org.uk)

Those figures are useful for orientation, not for declaring success. The datasets cover different audiences, industries, list qualities and reporting methods. A nonprofit association, a local service company and an ecommerce brand should not expect the same baseline. The fact that two large reports land in a similar range does not make that range a target for every sender.

There is also a measurement break inside the open-rate number itself. Litmus reports that more than half of detected email opens occur on devices with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection activated. Its current client-share data says Apple Mail and Gmail together represent nearly 90% of detected email-client usage in its dataset, while also warning that privacy-impacted opens are included in Apple Mail reporting. (litmus.com)

The right interpretation is narrower. If your open rate falls sharply across comparable campaigns, that may indicate a deliverability, sender-recognition or subject-line problem. If it rises, you may have improved those things. It does not tell you that the same proportion of people absorbed the offer.

AI summaries change the job your email has to do

An AI-assisted inbox does not make the email irrelevant. It changes where persuasion happens.

Gmail’s current AI features can summarize threads, answer questions about inbox content and suggest reminders. Microsoft’s Copilot can summarize Outlook threads and identify key points. These tools are designed to reduce the need to read every message in full. (blog.google)

That means an email can now succeed in at least three different ways. It can be noticed in the inbox, understood through a generated summary, or acted on through a click, reply or later visit. A pixel only gives you a partial view of the first two, and sometimes not even that reliably.

The important nuance is that Google and Microsoft’s public documentation describes how summaries are generated from message content. It does not establish that a summary request triggers the sender’s tracking pixel in the same way as a human opening an HTML email. The sensible conclusion is therefore an inference: AI inbox activity can create useful recipient-side understanding without producing a clean, equivalent open event.

This makes clear writing more valuable. Put the point, audience and next action near the top. Use descriptive subject lines. Avoid hiding the offer inside a long preamble that an assistant may compress into a vague sentence. The same discipline also helps a busy person who does open the message.

A better measurement routine for small-business email

1. Start with delivered messages

   Check bounces, spam complaints and inbox placement before interpreting engagement. A message cannot create a result if it does not reach the inbox.

2. Use opens for directional diagnosis

   Compare similar campaigns over time, especially when the audience, offer and sending conditions are comparable. Do not use one open-rate result as proof of success.

3. Make clicks the first engagement KPI

   Track unique click rate against delivered messages, and filter known bot or security-scanner activity where your platform supports it.

4. Connect the click to a business event

   Measure form submissions, booked calls, purchases, quote requests, replies or another action that matters to the business.

5. Review negative signals

   Unsubscribes, complaints and declining list growth can reveal message fatigue even when opens look healthy.

6. Test the full path

   A subject line can win attention while the email, landing page or booking process loses the customer. Judge the chain, not the first observable event.

What practitioners are moving toward

The practitioner consensus is not that opens have vanished. It is that they have been demoted.

Campaign Monitor now describes open rate as a directional metric and recommends adding clicks, conversions, bounces, unsubscribes and list growth to the analysis. Its documentation also notes that opens can be inflated by privacy features and that automated systems can affect click reporting. (campaignmonitor.com)

Higher Logic makes the same practical distinction in its association benchmark: opens remain useful directionally, while clicks are becoming a more reliable indicator of intent and value. A survey-based report from Mailmodo similarly says marketers need to rely more on clicks, conversions and customer feedback instead of open rates. That is not a laboratory finding, but it reflects where working email teams are putting their attention. (higherlogic.com)

For a small business, this is good news. You do not need a perfect model of every inbox assistant. You need a reporting setup that does not reward attractive but empty numbers.

Suppose a monthly email to past customers shows a 40% open rate, a 2% click rate and several quote requests. The open rate tells you the campaign was visible enough to compete in the inbox. The quote requests tell you it worked. If the next email records a higher open rate but no meaningful actions, it performed worse, even if the dashboard headline looks better.

That is the habit to build: report the open rate, then move quickly to the behavior that pays the bills.

Useful benchmark context, not universal targets

Keep the open rate, remove it from the throne

Do not delete email open rates from your reports. They can still help diagnose broad changes in deliverability, recognition and subject-line performance. They are especially useful when you compare your own campaigns under similar conditions rather than chasing an industry average.

Do stop using them as the main answer to “Did this email work?” AI summaries make the old shortcut even weaker because a recipient may receive the useful part of your message through an inbox assistant, while Apple’s privacy system may report an open before a person reads anything.

For most small businesses, the operating dashboard should lead with delivered messages, clicks, replies, bookings, purchases, qualified leads and unsubscribes. Add opens as context. If the campaign’s purpose is awareness rather than immediate action, use subsequent website visits, direct responses or branded search activity where you can measure them, and state clearly what is inferred rather than directly observed.

The best email is no longer the one that produces the highest open rate. It is the one that survives inbox filtering, communicates its value quickly and gives the right reader a reason to do something useful.