We also partner with a reputation monitor that makes sure we're behaving, and they also let us know if we're approaching thresholds of not email friendly behavior. The only time I've seen that happen was when we did some IP consolidation and certain mail handling companies automated systems found our behavior anomalous, and thus was flagged suspicious. Since we knew, and our monitor knew this would happen, it was handled, and everyone (us, monitor, mail domains, customers) was running back to normal behavior within about two weeks.
In the end, no blacklisting from this, and none while I've been here. We've had a fairly high inbox delivery rate (based on our rep monitor, about 3% higher than the average) over the years, and about the only thorn in my side is Comcast, and even our reputation monitor has "special" metrics to measure their customers in regards to Comcast. :)
They know how to send emails and, most importantly, how to collect complaints and bounces feedback from email providers.
Those numbers that Marketo and company show are either completely made up or at least have hidden “scaling algorithms” applied.
All modern email clients block all image and CSS requests by default, and email security filters examine any linked URLs automatically. So there is no reliable “opened but did not click” feedback mechanism at all in modern email.
Set up a seed list of 100 email addresses you control, send through email marketing tool of choice. Open exactly 1 of those emails from a default client. See what lies their “open rate” dashboard gives you.
And they send (and inbox) millions of emails by having reasonable open rates, not spamming, and respecting opt-outs.
All modern email clients block all image and CSS requests by default, and email security filters examine any linked URLs automatically. So there is no reliable “opened but did not click” feedback mechanism at all in modern email.
Set up a seed list of 100 email addresses you control, send through email marketing tool of choice. Open exactly 1 of those emails from a default client. See what lies their “open rate” dashboard gives you.
Whatever open rate stats are shown to marketers are irrelevant to google's deliverability choices.