Tips
Email remains the most effective marketing channel for resorts who want to drive measurable revenue, loyalty, and guest satisfaction. The game, however, is changing quickly and metrics that were used to measure one thing a few years ago now play a very different role in 2025. This is especially true when it comes to open rate. Once the darling of email marketing performance, email open rate now plays a very different, but important, role. We sat down with our in-house deliverability expert, Kristin Connors, to learn more.
–
Gregg; Let’s jump right in, Kristin, what does open rate no longer measure?
Kristin: Seeing an “open” no longer means that someone actually opened and read your email because “machine opens” have taken over. These automated opens obscure whether the email was opened by an automated process or a human. Or both.
Gregg: What specifically are you referring to with this idea of “machine opens?”
Kristin: There are two main types. The first, Mail Privacy Protection, is a privacy feature in Apple Mail that is designed to obscure open data and IP address data (often used for geolocation) from the person / platform that sent the email. The second is from Google. They now retrieve images in emails through an automated process before the user actually sees an email. This pre-fetching automatically triggers the tracking pixel which reports an open, whether or not a human actually ends up opening the email.
Gregg: If it’s not about performance, walk me through how you view open rates?
Kristin: Click-through rates and revenue remain good performance metrics. Open rates are now used to measure email health and inbox placement. It’s really important to know what your normal, overall open rate is, what a typical open rate is for different mail streams (newsletters, promotions, automations, etc.), and even down to open rates by email domain (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.).
Gregg: What are you watching for as you dig into those numbers?
Kristin: If I see a downward open rate trend or a significant drop, it could indicate a deliverability issue. I’d also look at opens by domain to see if it’s just one inbox provider that’s dropping, or multiple.
Gregg; What if open rates drop, but other metrics don’t change?
Kristin: If open rates drop, but clickthrough rates and revenue stay the same, it’s likely not a deliverability issue. That said, more investigation is needed to make that conclusion and feel confident about what’s happening.
Gregg: What if open rates don’t drop?
Kristin: If you see normal open rates or higher open rates, that typically tells you that the email was most likely delivered to the inbox, not the spam folder.
Gregg: Are changes in open rates always tied to deliverability?
Kristin: Usually, but not always. It can also mean other things, like:
Gregg: I know you and the team talk a lot about preventing issues. What can resorts and hotels do to avoid drops in deliverability?
Kristin: I’d go back to what we talked about last year because that three-step rule of thumb absolutely still applies:
Finally, be sure you are correctly authenticating emails. Email authentication is set up through a series of records associated with the domain (e.g., “myresort.com”) from which your emails are sent. The three to double check are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Gregg: Any last advice?
Kristin: As I’ve said before and as you mentioned above, prevention is easier than fixing. None of this guarantees you’ll reach the inbox, but by watching the right metrics, understanding what they’re actually telling you, and building a smart sending strategy, you can give yourself the best chance of success.
Read more about Kristin’s tips for email deliverability here.
