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Open rates are one of the most common ways to measure how your audience is engaging with your emails, but they’re not always accurate. Here’s what you need to know.

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How Open Rates Work

Open rates are tracked by placing a tiny invisible image (called a tracking pixel) in your email.
  • When the email is opened and images are loaded, the pixel is triggered.
  • That counts as an “open.”
Flowforth uses your sending domain for tracking pixels and link tracking. This means the domain in your tracking URLs matches your from address, which helps with deliverability since email providers trust emails where the links and sender domain are consistent. You can turn open and click tracking on or off per domain from your domain settings if you’re having issues or don’t need these metrics.

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Why Open Rates Aren’t Always Reliable

Open rates can give you a general sense of engagement, but they aren’t perfect. Reasons they can be inaccurate:
  • Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP): Apple pre-loads email content (including the pixel), making it seem like people opened your email even if they didn’t.
  • Some users never load images, so their opens aren’t tracked.
  • Some systems block tracking pixels, meaning legitimate opens don’t get counted.
Open rates are best used to identify big trends, not exact behavior.

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Filtering Out Bot Activity

On a sent email’s Metrics card, you can flip on Filter bot activity to hide opens and clicks that look automated — security scanners and inbox privacy services (like Apple MPP) that open emails within moments of delivery.
  • Recipients whose only activity happened right after delivery are treated as bots.
  • For recent sends, Flowforth also checks how the email was opened: fetches with Apple’s privacy-proxy signature are recognized directly, and opens from a real mail client are never counted as bots — even fast ones.
  • If a recipient later opened or clicked on their own, all of their activity still counts — real engagement is never hidden.
  • Filtered recipients are also removed from the sent total for your open rate, so engagement is calculated against the people who could have genuinely engaged. Unsubscribe, bounce, and complaint rates keep the full sent total, since bots can’t unsubscribe, bounce, or complain.
The filter is off by default and only changes what’s displayed — no data is deleted.

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What’s More Reliable?

While open rates are useful, more reliable engagement metrics include:
  • Click rates – when someone clicks a link in your email
  • Unsubscribe rates – if people are opting out, your content may not be landing well
  • Bounce and complaint rates – help track deliverability and sender reputation

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Tips for Better Insights

  • Focus on calls to action and link clicks when measuring email performance.
  • Use tagging and segmentation to send relevant emails and improve actual engagement.
  • Track metrics over time to see what’s working and where you can improve.
Still have questions about email analytics?
Reach out to support@flowforth.co.