Did you know that email open rates are on the decline across industries? As the chart illustrates, there has been a steady decline in open rates since 2004. However, this is not necessarily an indication that people are not opening emails at the same (or better rate).

The reason why “open” rates are potentially misleading is inherent in the method of tracking open rates. Most email systems track “opens” via graphics; when a reader downloads the associated images of an HTML email, the “tracking” graphic is activated, indicating that the email was opened. Therefore, reduced open rates are not necessarily an indication of a reduction in readers. Instead, it could indicate that many people have figured out they can simply read a lot of content without having to download images, thus flying under the radar of many tracking methods.

Therefore, one great way to uncover your “actual” open rates is to include images that are integrated into the content, such as charts and graphs. Over time, this should give you better open rates and a better indication of your active readership (and perhaps uncover some of your more tech-savvy customers!).

If you do choose to include images, check out today’s post from Deliverability.com, which touches on some of the best practices for including images in your emails:

Most email clients block email images from unknown senders by default. So best practice advice for the use of images on email (particularly large ones that appear in the preview pane) is to avoid using them if at all possible.

If you do have to use images the general recommendation is that you use them sparingly, making sure you use carefully thought Alt Tags AND text descriptors for the images. Other design techniques used to compensate for the image being blocked include, putting text behind them and using collapsible boxes.

Ironically, some of the best practices may not lead to better open rates. It appears that open rates can increase by NOT including the Alt Tags, perhaps because the lack of information encourages people to download the images to learn.

So should you follow best practices or not? This gets to one of the fundamental truths of marketing: it depends. Test, see what works, and follow through on what’s best for your circumstances and audience preferences.