Why Email Open Rate Is a Vanity Metric You Should Ignore

Lucas and Luna dig into why email open rate, long considered the gold standard of email marketing, is actually a misleading vanity metric. With Apple's Mail Privacy Protection and Google's image caching, open rates are inflated and unreliable. Instead, they argue for focusing on click-to-open rate, conversion rate, and list health metrics. Lucas cites data from a 2025 Litmus study showing open rates in B2C newsletters have climbed to 35% while actual engagement dropped. They discuss how to pivot your email strategy toward meaningful measurements and share a case study of a DTC brand that doubled revenue by ignoring open rates. Plus, the hosts explain why the ad-free model of Fexingo depends on listener support at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. #EmailMarketing #OpenRate #VanityMetric #EmailMetrics #MailPrivacyProtection #AppleMPP #ClickToOpenRate #ConversionRate #EmailStrategy #LitmusStudy #Marketing #Business #Podcast #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #MarketingPodcast #EmailNewsletter #ListHealth Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo