A friend showed his instantly results. 90% open rates? There must be a catch. I use outboundly and it is the best tool I have used in last 10 years and I never go above 35%. Given that they are the top tool, 90% still doesn’t seem possible. I don’t get that kind of open rates when I email my team.

How many peoples was in his email list?

Over 1500

Must be an one time thing, some exclusive offer or something!

No, he regularly gets that. And he says instantly always has these kind of rates even for others he knows. Do you use instantly?

Not tried yet! Have to check it at earliest

Let me know what do you find.

90% toh doesnt happen for internal emails with fever than 10 recepients

Exactly

unless its like an OTP email where you know the email is coming 😄

what about reply rate? How many he is getting?

Instantly gives open rates for the entire sequence. This is not the right measure. Step wise open rate is the right way to measure.

Aah that makes sense. So if one person opens 3 emails, it is counted as 3 opens?

If you send 6 emails in a sequence and during the course a person can open any of these emails. If 90% of the contacts open any one of the emails in the sequence, it is considered as open. This could be the reason for 90% open rate. This is my guess based on what you shared.

I see. This is wrong, but they can get by. 90% open rate in a 6 email sequence can just be 15%

You can just divide and say 15%. Thats not the logic.

I am saying in the worst case their 90% could really be 15%

1 contact can open all 6 emails and will still be considered 1 open.

True, but there 90% does not mean 90% of the people opened your emails. It’s all I am saying.

90% open means 90% of the contacts opened your email not from one email but from multiple emails.

I get that. I don’t think other tools count it that way. Maybe use the average open rate of every email or even the open rate of the best email.

even that is incredible no? @Karthick Raajha

It is. Even when we used Instantly for our clients I saw 80% open rates. Tools like Outreach, Outplay, Klenty, Lemlist will give you step level cadence.

a longer email sequence will get you there if you had 50-60% open rates on each email

This sounds like a scheme that a Product Manager and a Product Marketer cam up with to hack internal as well as customer metrics

@Dinesh Agarwal Even Smartlead works similarly, It would be a wise practice to stop relying on open rates and getting more focussed on the reply rates/ delivery. Food for thought: https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/179ypbb/email_open_rates_do_we_all_lie_about_them/

if he can deliver my company 90% open rates for my business I’m open to paying him handsomely.

I just find it wrong to report things that way. Unsuspecting users think everyone is opening their emails and get delusional with their team’s performance.

But why do you feel it's wrong?

This provides a misleading picture of how successful the email sequence is, as it doesn’t distinguish between those who opened one email and those who opened multiple emails. Businesses might overestimate their campaign’s reach and engagement based on these inflated numbers. Businesses may think the whole sequence performed well when in fact some emails could have been highly successful while others performed poorly. This misguides the optimization efforts for future campaigns, as companies may focus on incorrect aspects. Without knowing which specific emails performed well or poorly, businesses miss out on valuable information that could help improve their email marketing strategy, like understanding which content types resonate more or less with their audience. This could lead to skewed benchmarking, where businesses compare their performance against industry standards inaccurately, possibly resulting in poor strategic decisions.

@Sunil Arya what would be a reliable way to measure delivery? I've tried glockapps over a long time and feel the results are not reliable

@Raveesh Motlani thoughts below. You can check out: https://www.mailgenius.com/ and https://app.baremetalemail.com/login Another great tool for cold email, deliverability and infra: https://www.mailforge.ai/