Statistics for an email communication

From the screen showing the project statistics, click an email communication in the Project communications list. Detailed statistics for that communication are shown, as in the following example:

Note: For information about the update frequency for reporting statistics, see Update frequency.

Email communication statistics

The graph shows the number of opens and clicks over time.

Note: The date range that you can select at the top represents the time frame in which email campaigns were sent. The statistics will relate to all email campaigns sent during the selected time period. Since Launch refers to the time since the launch of the first email campaign.

Below the graph, you can see the percentage of unsubscribes, soft bounces, hard bounces and which devices are being used to access the emails. For a full definition of soft and hard bounces, see Soft and hard bounces. The time period used to calculate the bounce rate percentages and the device use percentages is the lifetime of the team. This means that sending more emails that do not bounce will reduce the percentage.

Note the following:

  • It is possible to receive an open status for an email that has a hard bounce due to the timing and nature of how email delivery and tracking work in AWS Simple Email Service (SES).
  • Initial Acceptance by Mail Server: The recipient's mail server may initially accept the email for delivery and allow it to be opened, but later determine that the email address is invalid, resulting in a hard bounce notification.
  • Email Client Behavior: Some email clients may load the tracking pixel even if the email address is invalid, allowing for an open status to be recorded despite the subsequent hard bounce.

The following statistics are shown on the dashboard:

  • Unique Opens. The number of emails that have been opened at least once by recipients. It does not count multiple opens by the same recipient.
  • Total Opens. The number of emails that have been opened by recipients. It counts multiple opens by the same recipient.
  • Unique Clicks. The number of clicks that have been made by recipients on unique clickable elements within the email, for example, an image or a button with a URL. It does not count multiple clicks on the same element.
  • Total Clicks. The number of clicks that have been made by recipients on unique clickable elements within the email, for example, an image or a button with a URL. It counts multiple clicks on the same element.
  • Delivered Emails. The number of successful deliveries of an email to a recipient's mail server. However, if an email later receives a bounce status, it will not be counted in the total delivery metrics. This typically occurs when the recipient sends an out-of-office automatic reply.
  • Sent Emails. The number of emails that have been successfully accepted by our email provider and delivery has been attempted.
  • Contacts. The total number of recipients from all campaigns within the specified time period.

CSV file

For a more detailed analysis of the emails, click Download data. This produces a CSV file showing statistics for each recipient.

The CSV file includes the value of the unique identifier for each record. This identifier is determined when a Data Source is imported (see Unique Identifier).

Note: Where date and time information is shown in the CSV file, the time zone is adjusted to your local time zone (if different from the time zone associated with the original communication). The adjustment made is also shown, as in the following example:

Example showing time zone adjustment

This shows that the time of the original communication was 14:06:38, but a +1 hour correction has been applied to show it in your local timezone as 15:06:38.

The CSV file has one row for each email sent, rather than one row per recipient. This covers the situation where a single customer has multiple products, and therefore receives a number of emails relating to those products.

The following columns are included in the CSV file:

  • Bounce Soft, Bounce Hard and Complaint, each of which can be TRUE or FALSE depending on whether there has been a soft bounce, hard bounce or complaint for the email. The column Bounce/Complaint Details gives information about the reason for the bounce or complaint. There is also a column called Timestamp that shows the date, time and time zone of the response.
  • Unsubscribed - the recipient has consciously chosen to opt-out of receiving further emails from a sender by clicking the unsubscribe link.
  • Blacklisted - the email or domain is already on EngageOne™ Communicate's internal blacklist (because the recipient previously unsubscribed from receiving an emails, the email hard bounced or a complaint was raised).
  • Invalid - the recipient is invalid due to one of the following reasons:
    • The email address syntax is incorrect.
    • The domain does not exist or has no Mail Exchange (MX) records.
    • EngageOne™ Communicate is unable to connect to SMTP server to confirm that the email exists.
      Note: If the result of Domain or SMTP validation is ambiguous, EngageOne™ Communicate passes the email address and attempts to send.
Notes:
  • It is possible for the number of unique clicks to be greater than the number of unique opens. The reason for this is that EngageOne™ Communicate uses invisible tracking pixels to capture email opens. Whenever a recipient opens an email with a tracking pixel, the pixel is also loaded. However, some email clients block images (including tracking pixels) from loading when a recipient opens an email. This can cause some email statistics, such as unique clicks, to be higher than the unique opens.
  • It is possible to receive an open status for an email that has a hard bounce; this is due to the timing and nature of how email delivery and tracking work in AWS SES.
  • Initial Acceptance by Mail Server: The recipient's mail server may initially accept the email for delivery and allow it to be opened, but later determine that the email address is invalid, resulting in a hard bounce notification.
  • Email Client Behavior: Some email clients might load the tracking pixel even if the email address is invalid, allowing for an open status to be recorded despite the subsequent hard bounce.