Hey there! If you’re a BDR or AE wondering whether your cold emails are actually getting opened, you’re in the right place. Email open rates are often the first hurdle in your sales process – and honestly, they can make or break your entire outreach strategy.

As of 2025, the average email open rate across industries is 42.35%, but that number tells only part of the story. The real question isn’t just “what’s a good email open rate?” – it’s understanding how to consistently get your carefully crafted messages in front of the right prospects.

Whether you’re trying to fill your pipeline or book more qualified meetings, mastering email open rates is non-negotiable. Let’s dive into everything you need to know about good email open rates in 2025.

What are Email Open Rates?

An email open rate is the percentage of delivered emails that recipients actually open and view. Think of it as your first impression metric – if people aren’t opening your emails, even the most brilliant sales pitch won’t matter.

Here’s how it works: When someone opens your email, a tiny invisible tracking pixel loads in the background. This pixel tells your email platform that the message was opened, allowing you to track engagement.

The formula is simple: Email Open Rate = (Number of Opens ÷ Number of Delivered Emails) × 100

For example, if you send 100 emails and 25 people open them, your open rate is 25%.

There are two types of opens you’ll encounter:

• Unique Opens: How many individual people opened your email (most important for sales)
• Total Opens: Every time someone opens your email, including multiple opens from the same person

But here’s where it gets tricky: Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which launched in September 2021, has significantly impacted open rate tracking. Open rates have nearly doubled in some cases due to artificial inflation, making the metric less reliable than before.

Approximately 64% of subscribers now open emails using a MPP-capable version of Apple Mail, which means a significant portion of your “opens” might be automated rather than genuine human engagement.

Why are Email Open Rates Important?

Your Pipeline’s First Gatekeeper

Email open rates aren’t just vanity metrics – they’re the critical first step in your sales funnel. Without opens, there are no clicks, no replies, and ultimately no meetings booked. For BDRs and AEs, this metric directly impacts your ability to generate pipeline and revenue.

Sender Reputation & Deliverability

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail and Outlook monitor your email open rates to determine your sender reputation. Consistently low open rates signal to ISPs that your emails might be unwanted, increasing the likelihood they’ll land in spam folders.

This creates a dangerous cycle: poor open rates → damaged sender reputation → worse deliverability → even lower open rates. Conversely, strong email open rates help maintain good deliverability, ensuring your future emails reach the inbox.

Early Warning System

Your open rate serves as an immediate diagnostic tool for your outreach strategy. A sudden drop can indicate:

• Deliverability issues
• Poor list quality
• Ineffective subject lines
• Targeting problems

For example, if 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices, a drop in open rates might signal mobile optimization issues.

How to Calculate Email Open Rates

The Basic Formula

Calculating your email open rate is straightforward:

Email Open Rate (%) = (Number of Opens ÷ Number of Delivered Emails) × 100

Example: You send 1,000 cold emails. 50 bounce (aren’t delivered), so 950 are successfully delivered. 190 people open your email.

Your email open rate = (190 ÷ 950) × 100 = 20%

Understanding Apple Mail Privacy Protection Impact

Here’s where things get complicated. Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection launched, open rates have increased dramatically – in some cases nearly doubling from around 22% to 40%.

What’s happening: Apple Mail automatically downloads email images when emails arrive, regardless of whether the recipient actually opens them. This creates “phantom opens” that inflate your metrics.

The impact is significant: The adoption of Mail Privacy Protection is now greater than 95% among Apple Mail users, affecting the reliability of traditional open rate tracking.

Adjusted Open Rate Solutions

Some platforms now offer “adjusted open rate” metrics that attempt to filter out these artificial opens. Mailchimp, for example, can identify which emails were opened by Apple MPP and allows you to exclude them from reports for emails sent after June 22, 2024.