Number of opens

Opens: the number of people who opened your campaign in a trackable way

We're able to track two kinds of opens:

When someone views the HTML version of your campaign (including the images). So if the email is opened and images are blocked by default in the email client, the open won't 'count' until the recipient clicks to download those images.
When someone receives the plaintext version and visits at least one of your links. Since there are no images in the plaintext version, Emma can only track an open if a link in the plaintext version is clicked. If that happens, Emma tracks the open and the click in the response page.

We can't track an open if someone receives the plaintext version and doesn't do anything with it, if someone views an email offline, or if someone views a limited-HTML version that doesn't contain the images. For this reason, it is highly likely that your true open rate is higher than can be reported (by us or anyone), and that some people who won't appear in your open list have indeed opened and seen your email. For more on how opens get tracked, read this article from the Ask Emma archive.

Understanding how your response numbers stack up. Like all response numbers, open rates vary wildly based on the quality (and permission level) of an audience list, the nature of the content and other factors. The average open rate for the entire sending Emma community is around 20%, which is right in line with industry average for permission-based sending to house lists. This article from the Ask Emma archive can help give you a bit more perspective on evaluating your numbers.

Overview - Understanding delivery at the recipient level
Number of clicks - All about clicks & click-tracking

Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.