Mail clients fetch images on the reader's behalf, so a large share of recorded opens were never opened by a person. The number still moves, which is the dangerous part: it looks like a signal.
Replies are real, because a human typed them. Meetings held are realer still. Cost per meeting held is the only one that connects the channel to the business.
Everything above the reply is diagnostics. Useful for finding a broken campaign, useless for judging one that works.
Do open rates still matter for cold email?
No. Mail clients and corporate security filters fetch the tracking pixel before a person reads anything, so a recorded open is not a reader. Tracking also costs replies. In Hunter's 2025 data, sequences with email tracking enabled replied at 4.4%, and sequences without it at 7.4%.
| Sequences | Reply rate |
|---|---|
| With email tracking | 4.4% |
| Without tracking | 7.4% |
What should be measured instead?
| Number | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Reply rate | whether the list and the message work |
| Meetings held | whether the replies came from the right people |
| Cost per meeting held | whether the channel pays for itself |
Source: Hunter, The State of Cold Email, 31 million emails sent by Hunter users in 2025.
We report meetings held, and we are paid on them. A meeting counts when it happened and the person matched the profile agreed at the start.