The percentage of delivered emails that recipients open, used as a proxy for newsletter audience engagement when evaluating email affiliate partners. Benchmark ranges: below 20% = low engagement (poor affiliate performance proxy); 20-24% = average; 25-34% = good; 35%+ = excellent. Critical context: Apple Mail Privacy Protection (iOS 15+) inflates open rate measurements by pre-loading email pixels regardless of whether the user actually opened the email; publishers using Beehiiv, ConvertKit, or Mailchimp on Apple-heavy audience lists may show artificially high open rates. Request click-through rate (CTR) and link clicks as supplementary engagement signals — CTR is harder to inflate than open rate. Target publishers with 35%+ open rate AND 2%+ CTR for highest-probability email affiliate performance.
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