Overview

This article explains the difference between open rate and click rate, and which metric best reflects genuine subscriber engagement.

What is Open Rate?

Open rate measures how many subscribers opened an email. It has two components:

• Unique opens — recorded once per subscriber, the first time they open the email.
• Total opens — the total number of times the email was opened, including repeat views.

Note: Apple Mail privacy settings can inflate open rates artificially — see below.

What is Click Rate?

Click rate measures how many subscribers clicked a link within an email. It's the more reliable indicator of genuine engagement, showing what subscribers are actually interested in and helping identify potential leads.

Subscriber clicks also feed into their iRealty profile, helping the system flag buying, selling, or renting intent. Like open rate, click rate is split into:

• Unique clicks — per subscriber.
• Total clicks — overall count.

Why Click Rate Is More Reliable

Apple Mail's Mail Privacy Protection setting can automatically pre-load and "open" emails without the subscriber actually viewing them, artificially inflating open rate. This is a subscriber-side setting and can't be controlled from the sending platform.

Because of this, click rate should be treated as the more trustworthy metric when assessing subscriber engagement and identifying leads.