Email marketing consistently delivers strong results for event organisers. Building and maintaining a list of people who are interested in your events gives you a direct line of communication that does not depend on algorithmic whims. But the value of that list depends on whether people actually open and read your emails. An open rate of 40% means four out of ten recipients engage with your message. An open rate of 10% means nine out of ten people ignore it entirely.
Understanding what drives open rates, and what suppresses them, is essential knowledge for any event organiser who relies on email to sell tickets.
How open rates are measured
Email open tracking works by embedding a tiny invisible image (a tracking pixel) in each email. When a recipient opens the email and the image loads, the open is recorded. This method has always been imperfect (text-only email clients and disabled images are not tracked), but it became significantly less reliable in 2021 when Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey.
MPP pre-loads tracking pixels regardless of whether the user actually opens the email. This inflates open rates for Apple Mail users. Depending on your audience, Apple Mail users could represent 40% to 60% of your list. Most email marketing platforms now flag Apple-inflated opens or provide adjusted metrics. When comparing open rates over time, be aware of this shift and focus on trends within a consistent measurement framework rather than absolute percentages.
What is a good open rate?
Open rates vary significantly by industry, list quality, and email type. For event-related emails, a genuine open rate (excluding Apple MPP inflation) in the range of 20% to 35% is generally healthy. Announcement emails for highly anticipated events can achieve much higher rates. Routine newsletters tend to sit at the lower end.
More important than comparing yourself to generic averages is tracking your own open rates over time. A declining trend is a warning sign that your content, frequency, or list quality needs attention.
Subject line optimisation
The subject line is the single biggest factor in whether someone opens your email. It competes with dozens of other messages in the recipient's inbox, and you have roughly 40 to 50 characters to make your case (fewer on mobile screens).
What works
Specificity beats vagueness. "Summer Festival lineup announced: 12 acts confirmed" outperforms "Exciting news from us!" every time. Including the event name or key artist increases opens because it gives the reader a reason to care. Urgency works when it is genuine: "Early bird tickets close Friday" is effective if it is true. Creating false urgency erodes trust.
Personalisation can help. Including the recipient's first name in the subject line typically improves open rates, though the effect varies. What works better is segmenting your list and writing subject lines relevant to each segment. A subject line about jazz events sent to people who have previously bought jazz tickets is inherently more personal than a generic blast.
What does not work
ALL CAPS and excessive punctuation (!!!) trigger spam filters and put off readers. Misleading subject lines that do not match the email content might get one extra open but will damage long-term trust and increase unsubscribes. Overly long subject lines get truncated on mobile devices, hiding the key information.
Test your subject lines. Most email marketing platforms offer A/B testing where you can send two different subject lines to a small portion of your list and then send the winner to the rest. Over time, this builds your understanding of what resonates with your specific audience.
Send timing
When you send an email affects open rates because it determines where your message lands in the recipient's inbox. An email sent at 3am will be buried under dozens of other messages by the time the recipient checks their phone in the morning.
For UK event audiences, mid-morning on weekdays (Tuesday to Thursday, between 9am and 11am) tends to produce good open rates. However, the best send time for your specific audience may differ. Your email marketing platform should provide data on when your subscribers are most active. Some platforms offer send-time optimisation features that automatically deliver emails at the best time for each individual recipient.
For time-sensitive announcements (on-sale dates, lineup reveals), send at the moment that matters rather than optimising for open rate. An on-sale announcement at 9am on a Friday, when tickets go live, is correct even if Tuesday morning typically performs better.
List hygiene and segmentation
Clean your list regularly
Sending emails to addresses that consistently bounce or never open your messages damages your sender reputation. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook track how recipients interact with your messages. If a large proportion of your emails go unopened, the provider is more likely to route future emails to the spam folder or Promotions tab.
Remove hard bounces immediately (these are invalid email addresses). For soft bounces and long-term non-openers, run a re-engagement campaign first. Send a simple email asking if they still want to hear from you. Those who do not respond or open within a reasonable period should be removed from your active list.
Segment by engagement
Not everyone on your list is equally interested. Segment your list into active subscribers (opened or clicked in the last 90 days), lapsed subscribers (no engagement in 90 to 180 days), and inactive subscribers (no engagement for over 180 days). Tailor your approach for each segment.
Active subscribers get your full marketing programme. Lapsed subscribers get a re-engagement sequence. Inactive subscribers get a final "do you still want to hear from us?" email before removal. This approach protects your sender reputation and ensures your open rates reflect genuine engagement.
From name and preview text
The "from" name is as important as the subject line. Use a recognisable name that recipients will associate with your events. If people signed up via your festival website, the from name should be the festival name, not a generic company name they might not recognise.
Preview text (the snippet that appears next to or below the subject line in most email clients) is often overlooked. If you do not set it explicitly, the email client will pull the first line of your email body, which is often "View this email in your browser" or similar boilerplate. Write deliberate preview text that complements the subject line and gives an additional reason to open.
Email frequency
Sending too frequently is the most common reason people unsubscribe from event mailing lists. There is no universal rule for optimal frequency, but a useful guideline is to only send an email when you have something genuinely worth saying. For most event organisers, this means one to three emails per month during quiet periods and more frequent sends during active on-sale campaigns.
Watch your unsubscribe rate alongside your open rate. If unsubscribes spike after a particular email or during a heavy sending period, you are pushing too hard. A small, engaged list that opens your emails is far more valuable than a large list that ignores them.
Technical factors
Email deliverability directly affects open rates. If your emails land in spam folders, they will never be opened. Key technical factors include proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication for your sending domain, using a reputable email marketing platform, avoiding spam trigger words, and maintaining a consistent sending volume (sudden spikes in volume can trigger spam filters).
If your open rates drop suddenly without an obvious content explanation, deliverability is the most likely cause. Check your platform's deliverability reports and consider using a tool like Mail-Tester to evaluate your emails' spam score. Maintaining strong deliverability is as important as writing great subject lines. For a deeper look at choosing the right platform and using its features effectively, see our guide to email drip campaigns for events.
Measuring what matters
Open rate is an important metric, but it is not the only one that matters. Click-through rate (the percentage of openers who click a link) tells you whether the email content was compelling. Conversion rate (the percentage of clickers who buy a ticket) tells you whether the landing page and offer delivered. Track all three together for a complete picture of email performance.
An email with a 30% open rate and a 1% click-through rate is underperforming compared to one with a 20% open rate and a 5% click-through rate. The second email drives more actual traffic to your ticket sales page. Open rates get your foot in the door; what happens after the open is what sells tickets.
