📊 Analytics
Open rate: what it means
How open rate is calculated, what a good rate looks like for school newsletters, and why it matters.
Open rate tells you what percentage of recipients opened your newsletter. It is one of the most useful signals for understanding whether families are engaged.
How it is calculated
Open rate = (unique opens / total recipients sent) x 100
For example: if you send to 80 parents and 36 open the email, your open rate is 45%.
What is a good open rate for school newsletters?
School newsletters typically see open rates between 30% and 50%. This is much higher than typical marketing emails (which average around 20%) because parents have a genuine interest in what is happening in the classroom.
As a rough guide:
- Above 40% — excellent engagement
- 25-40% — healthy, normal range
- Below 25% — consider reviewing your sending frequency or list quality
How open tracking works
Open tracking works by embedding a tiny invisible pixel in the email. When the recipient's email client loads the email, the pixel loads and registers an open event. Some email clients (notably Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection) pre-load images, which can inflate open counts. This means actual open rates may be slightly lower than reported.