While you always hope to see high engagement with your messages, it is unlikely to get 100% of your audience to open a Blast, especially when your audience is large. If you see a Blast with a 100% open rate and it seems unusual, there are several reasons the open rate may be high.

Typically, an open rate approaching 100% is the result of an AI or security program opening emails to assist you and protect your organization's inboxes. With heightened security standards from public email services like Google and Yahoo!, updates to Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and the implementation of new technology like AI, the practice of tracking email open rates is regularly shifting.

We track email opens using an invisible tracking pixel that's in each email. Every time the pixel is loaded, our system counts an open for that specific email. This process is the industry standard, and it provides the best overall tracking available. Still, open tracking is best used to determine engagement trends at scale. For a 100% accurate report on whether a subscriber opened and read a specific message, we recommend utilizing Blast Elements like Pulse Surveys and Acknowledgements.

If your organization uses Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Exchange, these systems often automatically open and scan messages. These security scans can count as an email open. This happens especially often with emails that contain hyperlinks or attachments, as security filters typically check these for malicious content. This is the most common reason you'll see many simultaneous opens.

Common third-party integrations like Mimecast, Proofpoint, or Barracuda may be opening and scanning your messages to check for spam or for their own reporting purposes. These services are often implemented by your IT team and are critical to security for your organization.

With the introduction of AI in all facets of the web, emails are an easily accessible resource for language learning. However, to learn, these AI systems open and scan emails. While these systems provide great benefits like email summaries and auto-categorization, the increase in implementation of these across public and private email services may cause an increase in your open rates.
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If a subscriber views the email by hovering or reading in a preview pane (such as the one in Gmail), this can count as an open.
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This program may download iOS and macOS users' emails to Apple's servers before they reach the Subscriber. As the message is being loaded from Apple's servers to a Subscriber's inbox, an open may register.
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First and foremost, organizations sending email to internal subscribers should work with their IT team and Cerkl to configure your email services to add emails sent with Cerkl Broadcast to your Safe Senders lists. Please contact Cerkl Support or your Cerkl customer success manager for more information.

As new AI features are introduced in the programs and services we all use, adding emails to a Safe Senders list may not always prevent increased open rates. Below are some strategies that can help reduce automatic email scanning by these new AI systems.

Some words or characters may trigger AI or security scanning based on your organization's own AI or settings. In general, we've found the use of exclamation marks (!), question marks (?), emoji, all caps (even acronyms), and certain words like "video" and "free" may trigger the latest AI scanning features.

We recommend reviewing your Blast Insights to see what your Blasts with 100% open rates have in common. With that knowledge, you can consider whether to adjust your writing and/or work with your IT Team to determine what options are available.
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Encourage subscribers to check for emails that have been auto-categorized as promotions, marketing, or spam and to report when they're incorrectly categorized: "not promotion," "not marketing," "not junk/spam." This will help your organization's AI learn, and it will improve over time as more people engage.
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We also recommend reminding and encouraging subscribers not to report as spam if they are mistakenly doing so.

Preview Text for Blasts provides additional context into the purpose of the email, and it can help you ensure important information is seen first by inboxes. We recommend including Preview Text for all Blasts, but especially for Blasts that begin with an image so your inbox preview is less likely to show the image URL.

Ensure your Sender Profiles are utilizing real and active email addresses in good standing.

When possible, limit utilization of different Reply to and Send From email addresses in a Blast's Sending Info.

Certain types of social links and terms regularly included in Blast Footers may also increase the likelihood of the email being scanned. Please review your Footer settings in Blast > Controls to ensure all Social Links included are necessary.

For organizations utilizing internal communications, disable Allow Unsubscribe in Audience > Controls - Subscriber Options to ensure the reference to subscription status is not included.
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Open rate is just one of the many metrics that can help you understand subscriber engagement. Cerkl Broadcast offers features like Blast Acknowledgements, Pulse Surveys, and Link Click Rate insights, which can also be used to paint a more detailed picture of your Subscriber activity.
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If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@cerkl.com or use the support Chat toward the bottom right-hand corner of any cerkl.com page.