Why 35% Alone Doesn’t Tell the Full Story

A 35% open rate looks impressive on a dashboard — but the number underneath it may not be what you think. Since 2021, the industry's most-quoted metric has been quietly broken, and judging a campaign by open rate alone can lead service businesses to celebrate (or panic) over data that doesn't reflect reality.

The culprit is Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). As Salesforce's benchmark guidance explains, MPP blocks tracking pixels and pre-loads emails in the background, which inflates open rate data and makes it impossible to know precisely whether 35% is "good" or "bad." Braze goes further, advising marketers to treat open rates as directional indicators rather than absolute measures.

The benchmark numbers themselves confirm how murky things have become. Reported averages swing wildly depending on the source: MoEngage's analysis of over 17 billion emails puts the overall average at 28.6%, while Braze's 2025 Email Benchmarking Report cites 35.9%, and Campaign Monitor's cross-industry data sits at just 21.5%. Against that spread, a 35% open rate could be stellar, average, or unremarkable — depending on whose spreadsheet you trust.

That inconsistency is why open rate should never be the only email metric you evaluate, a point Campaign Monitor states explicitly. For a reactivation campaign targeting past HVAC customers or lapsed dental patients, the questions that actually matter are different:

• Click-to-open rate (CTOR) — Salesforce considers a CTOR above 20% strong, revealing whether content resonates with people who do open
• Click-through rate — 2–5% is the benchmark for general marketing emails per Salesforce
• Conversion rate — how many opens actually became booked appointments or returned customers
• Historical trend — Braze recommends comparing campaigns against your own past performance rather than industry averages

This matters for CallMyCustomers clients in a very practical way. When a win-back campaign runs across calls, texts, and emails together, the email open rate is just one signal in a multi-channel mix — and an unreliable one at that. The real measure of a reactivation campaign is booked work and repeat revenue, not inflated pixel counts.

As one marketing analysis puts it, a single metric cannot paint a comprehensive picture of a program's success. That's especially true when the metric itself is compromised. Judge your campaigns by what customers do, not by how many inboxes Apple's servers happened to preload.

What Metrics Actually Matter for Reactivation Campaigns

For US service businesses running reactivation campaigns, a 35% email open rate tells only part of the story. While open rates can indicate initial interest, they no longer provide a reliable measure of engagement due to Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflating tracking data, making absolute evaluations problematic according to Salesforce research. What truly matters is whether those opened emails drive meaningful actions like bookings, reviews, or repeat service appointments.

Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) and conversion rate offer far better insight into campaign effectiveness for reactivation efforts. CTOR measures the percentage of people who clicked a link after opening an email, revealing how well the content resonates with engaged recipients. Salesforce benchmarks show that a CTOR above 20% is generally considered strong for marketing emails, with content-rich or educational emails often achieving 20-30% and transactional emails exceeding 30%. For service businesses, this metric directly reflects whether reactivation messages successfully prompt recipients to take the next step—whether scheduling a service appointment, leaving a review, or responding to a renewal reminder.

Conversion rate completes the picture by tracking the percentage of delivered emails that result in the desired action, such as a booked job or submitted review. MoEngage data indicates average email conversion rates of 12.04%, with top performers reaching over 21%, highlighting the revenue potential when reactivation emails effectively motivate past customers to re-engage. For CallMyCustomers clients, focusing on these metrics ensures campaigns are evaluated not just on visibility, but on their ability to generate tangible repeat revenue from existing customer lists. A balanced approach tracking CTOR, conversion rate, list growth, and overall ROI provides the clearest path to optimizing reactivation strategies that turn inactive customers into booked work.

How to Improve Real Engagement Using Proven Tactics

The real question isn't whether 35% clears an arbitrary benchmark — it's whether your emails actually move customers toward a booking. Open rates have become unreliable directional signals at best, inflated by Apple's Mail Privacy Protection and stripped of precision across every major platform. According to Salesforce benchmarks, the industry has shifted focus toward Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) as a truer measure of content resonance, with a CTOR above 20% generally considered strong. For CallMyCustomers clients running reactivation campaigns across HVAC, dental, and home services, the metric that matters is whether a past customer clicks, replies, or books.

• Behavior-based personalization drives open rates as high as 42.36% in Financial Services and 37.04% in Retail & Ecommerce, per MoEngage analysis of 17 billion emails
• Automated flows generate nearly 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends, delivering 3x higher click rates and 13x higher placed order rates than campaigns, according to Klaviyo benchmarks
• Comparing performance against your own historical data provides clearer engagement trends than chasing industry averages, as Braze recommends

The highest-leverage move for service businesses is shifting from broadcast campaigns to triggered flows — post-service follow-ups, renewal reminders, seasonal tune-up prompts — that arrive when the need is real. Behavior-based personalization and automated flows consistently outperform generic sends because they align with the customer's actual cycle, not your marketing calendar. When every message is approved by the owner before it goes out and replies route straight into the booking workflow, you're not optimizing for opens — you're optimizing for booked work.