Performance report: How to evaluate the sending of your email messages

Recipient groups: All doo contact groups that you selected as recipients during the primary sending.

Selected contacts: All contacts that you selected individually or via a group as recipients for the message. This also includes contacts added later as recipients. A contact always counts as 1 here, even if they are in multiple groups or have received the message multiple times.

Duplicates: If a contact is included multiple times in the primarily selected contact groups, the duplicates are removed so that no multiple sending of the same email message to the same contact occurs.

Recipients: The number of all selected contacts without duplicates.

Skipped: If a recipient is skipped, it means that no email was sent to the email address by our system. This can happen, for example, because the contact had unsubscribed or was marked as a hard bounce or complaint. You can find an overview of the reasons in the email activities.

Sent: The number of recipients without skipped contacts. Sent means that our system has sent at least one email to the contact, not that this email was delivered.

Bounced: The recipient reported back that the email could not be delivered. You can find an overview of the reasons in the email activities. The bounce rate is calculated as bounces in relation to the sent messages. According to the doo email policy, it must not exceed 5% per email message. You can find more information in this article on bounce management. The technical basics of emails explain why emails can bounce. And in the blog post on contact list maintenance in email marketing (German), you can learn about the problems that can arise and how to build and maintain a clean contact list. The last article is unfortunately only available in German, but modern browsers kindly offer translation options.

Delivered: All sent emails without the bounced messages. The delivery rate corresponds to the delivered messages in relation to the sent messages. Please note that in individual cases, an email may not be delivered, but no bounce activity is recorded, for example, because the email was blocked by a firewall or internal filter or placed in quarantine without returning a bounce notification.

Opened: An email is considered opened if there is at least one render or click activity. An email is rendered when the images are downloaded. This often happens when the recipient opens the email. Since downloading images is suppressed by some email programs and done automatically by others, it is not sufficient to equate opens with renders. Therefore, we also consider emails that have not been rendered but have a click as opened. At the same time, there are programs that automatically render emails, regardless of whether the recipient has actually opened them or not. An email can also be rendered if the recipient triggers the download of images while clicking through emails but does not actually read them. Therefore, the number of opens or the open rate is only partially meaningful. Nevertheless, it is a indicator of whether an email has actually arrived.

Clicked: The number of recipients for whom there is at least one click activity, regardless of which link or how often they click. Exception: The click on the unsubscribe link is not counted as a click but as an unsubscribe (see below). A click is the best indicator of whether a person has actually received and opened an email and is interested in the content. Usually, the goal of an email message is for people to follow the “call-to-action” in the form of a button or link. Note that some companies use security mechanisms in which programs follow all links in an email to prevent fraud attempts. In this case, click activities may be recorded for a contact even though the email may not have been delivered to their inbox.

Unsubscribes: The number of recipients who have unsubscribed via the corresponding link and no longer wish to receive emails from you in the future. By clicking, the contact’s email subscriptions are set to “No marketing emails,” and the contact will no longer receive email messages and event reminders, as these count as marketing emails. Transactional emails will continue to be sent.

Complaints: The number of recipients for whom a complaint has been received, for example, by classifying the email as spam or fraud attempt. You can find an overview of the reasons in the email activities. In the blog post on contact list maintenance in email marketing (German), you can learn about the problems that can arise and how to build and maintain a clean contact list. The last article is unfortunately only available in German, but modern browsers kindly offer translation options.

Open Rate: The open rate describes the number of all opens of an email message in relation to its total delivery (example: 100 delivered messages and 10 opens = 10% open rate).

Click Rate: The click rate (click-through rate) describes the number of all recipients who have clicked at least once in relation to the total delivery (example: 100 delivered messages and 5 clicks = 5% click rate).

Effective Click Rate: The effective click rate (click-to-open rate) describes the number of all recipients who have clicked at least once in relation to the opens (example: 100 delivered messages, 50 opened, and 25 clicks = 50% effective click rate). This rate is a good indicator of whether your call-to-action is working and whether recipients who open the email are interested enough to click.

3. Response to the Event Invitation

In the third section, the metrics related to the response to the invitation are displayed. This statistic is only shown if you had at least one invitation link in your email.

If a recipient clicks on different invitation links, their status is determined by the last click. Once a recipient has booked, their status changes to booked and remains booked, even if they click on invitation links afterward or their booking is rejected or cancelled. You can see every single click in your email activities, where every reaction of your contacts is listed.