Debate: Did Mailchimp's update actually ruin open rates or was it always just vanity?

I've been tracking email campaigns for two years and saw open rates drop by 15% right after Mailchimp's privacy update in late 2023. Some swear Apple's Mail Privacy Protection already killed open rates before that. But here's the thing - my click rates stayed steady, so maybe opens were always a bad metric. Has anyone else seen engagement stay flat while opens crashed, or did your actual conversions take a hit too?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia55813d ago

Kept re-reading your post and it reminded me of a delivery route I used to run where GPS said I took a wrong turn every time but I always ended up at the right house. @kellys78 that Instagram comparison is spot on, we just get hung up on numbers that feel important until they aren't. Your click rates staying the same tells me people are still engaging, Mailchimp just stopped showing us that part of the picture.

kellys7813d ago

Wait, isn't this basically the same thing that happened with Instagram likes a few years back? Everyone freaked out when they hid the counts but engagement was still there just not in the same old way. I feel like we put too much trust in metrics that platforms give us without really asking what they mean. Your click rates staying steady tells me people still care about your content, they just aren't opening emails in a way that gets tracked anymore. Maybe opens were always a vanity metric like you said, kind of like how we used to obsess over page views but now everyone cares about time on site instead.

uma_ellis13d ago

Wait, does that mean I've been chasing the wrong number this whole time? lol I gotta admit, I used to be one of those people who checked open rates like they were gospel. I'd see a dip and think, "oh no, nobody cares anymore." But hearing you two put it that way makes a lot of sense. It's like when I used to look at my delivery count and think I was doing great, but really the quality of each stop mattered more. Your click rates holding steady is the real story here, the open thing was just something to make us feel better or worse. I guess I'll pay more attention to what people actually do instead of what the platform wants me to see.