Lower open rates in HubSpot compared to other platforms

[PJohnson7]

My company has recently switched to Hubspot for our email campaigns, and we've noticed our open rates have gone down compared to the previous platforms we've used (Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor), all while sending to the same contact lists.

We thought it was possibly due to the content, email timing, and/or a small sample size, so we randomized our lists, split into 3rds, and sent the same email on all 3 platforms at the same time. This issue still seems to be prevalent. 

The open rates for the same email are as follows

Campaign Monitor: 33.42% open rate

Mailchimp: 24.6% open rate

HubSpot: 14.9% open rate

I understand that this is a small sample size, and we will try using the same 3 lists on different platforms next time to see if there are any different results.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Do Mailchimp and Campaign monitor calculate open rates differently than HubSpot? 

We like using HubSpot but we are worried that we are recieving less opens and engagement from using it to send email campaigns.

[MBeran6]

@PJohnson7 thanks for posting your test. Is the HubSpot open rate you posted (14.9%) the raw open rate or the adjusted open rate?

I look forward to hearing your next test results. 

I've also experienced drops in open rates with certain emails that moved from MailChimp to HubSpot. In some instances the click through rates have skyrocketed (and clicks remained steady) which tells me that the drop in opens is from how they are calculated, not from getting placed in spam.

In other instances I've seen opens and clicks drop together which is more difficult to understand because it doesn't follow the same pattern. Unfortunately due to content differences it's difficult to compare one month to another.

This is definitely an area of concern and I've had to spend considerable time trying to explain it. Overall I've evaluated other aspects of our email programs such as inbox placement, IP/Sender reputation and email spam score and none of these can explain the drop in performance. 

All this leads me to believe it's due to calculation differences. I think the adjusted open rate gets us closer to what other platforms are calculating but the bot filtering is still a factor.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @PJohnson7,

One explanation could be HubSpot's bot filtering and adjusted open rate calculation:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/exclude-traffic-from-your-site-analytics#filter-bot-activity

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/analyze-the-adjusted-open-rate-of-your-emails

While Mailchimp and HubSpot are obviously aware of this, I'm not finding documentation of them treating metrics differently because of it:

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/what-are-server-clicks/

https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-open-tracking/

That could be the reason.

Best regards!