# What is Open Rate?

What is Open Rate? The percentage of recipients who opened the email. Average: 20-25% in eCommerce.

## How it works in practice

Open rate is a 'hunger index' — how hungry the audience is for content. Subject line matters more than sender name, which matters more than preview text.

## Related metrics

- Subject Line — the biggest factor
- Deliverability — emails in spam mean near-zero opens
- Segmentation — a segmented list means a high open rate
- CTR (Email) — what happens after opening

## Common misconception

'A 50% open rate is excellent.' Since iOS 15, Apple opens emails automatically. Open rate is inflated by 10-15%. Click rate is a better metric.

## How to fix it

Dropping? (1) deliverability, (2) clean the list — remove inactives after 6+ months, (3) A/B test subject lines, (4) a personal sender name.

## Real-world example

A bookstore: open rate dropped from 28% to 14% due to 8,000 inactive recipients. Removing them brought open rate back up to 31%.

## Where to start

Clean your list every 6 months.

---

Category: Analytics · From the [Jimmy OS KPI Glossary](https://jimmy-os.com/glossary/kpi.md) · Source page: https://jimmy-os.com/glossary/kpi/open-rate