Email statuses (all metrics explained)

Summary

Overview
Main emails statuses
Additional metrics explained

Overview

Email statuses might be one of the reasons why you use Esendex. This way you can tell if your message has been opened, clicked, encountered an error (“bounced”) and even if your recipient has decided it was spam, and all that on the same page! Understanding these statuses will allow you to interpret your statistics in a proper manner, and you will be able to boost your deliverability.

Main emails statuses

“Delivered” Emails

If an email has the “delivered” status it means that it was successfully sent and accepted by the recipient server.

The number of delivered emails matches the total number of sent emails minus the errors of delivery (see “Bounced” & “Blocked” below). Therefore, the quality of your contact list is the key!

Being “delivered” does not necessarily mean the email will be “delivered to the recipient’s inbox”. It is impossible for anyone but the recipient to know if the message was delivered to their inbox or the junk folder.

The Stats page, along with open & click tracking, can provide insightful information on your email placement and deliverability.

“Opened” emails

The Open Rate is the percentage of unique ‘opens’ based on the total number of emails delivered.

An invisible tracking pixel (image) is added to each email you send via Esendex. When the recipient’s email client loads this tracking pixel, the email is considered ‘opened’.

The Open Rate is a good indicator of how many people read your email, it is not however a precise measurement. Please keep in mind that:

The recipient’s email client must be able to accept & read your HTML emails;
The recipient’s email client must be able to display images;

“Clicked” Emails

The Click Rate accounts for successfully delivered emails with at least one click (excluding those clicks where an unsubscribe occurs).

Each link in your email receives a unique identifier that records data on when a link is clicked, by whom, from where, when, etc. which can be found on the Stats page.

The Click Rate is a very powerful indicator as it provides insight into how recipients interact with your specific content. High click rates are generally a sign of interest and can help shape your future campaigns. Moreover, regardless of how a recipient views the emails, a click will always be detected.

“Unsubscribed” Emails

The Unsubscribe Rate is related to the number of delivered emails, and indicates the number of people who opted out of your list using the unsubscribe link.

As per the Esendex Acceptable Use Policy, an unsubscribe link is mandatory for all marketing campaigns.

Emails reported as “Spam”

The percentage of emails reported as Spam is based on the total number of emails delivered.

Spam complaints are made when the recipient believes an email is unsolicited. Spam is typically aimed at marketing emails; whereas transactional emails usually do not warrant spam complaints.

Reporting an email as Spam is an action that is taken by the recipient upon receiving your email. This is not to be confused with emails that have been delivered to the spam folder by the ISP; this is not considered a spam complaint.

Many ISPs provide a ‘this is spam’ button or link to each email they deliver. When a recipient clicks this button, the email is reported as Spam and is displayed on your Stats page.

However, sometimes the recipient may contact their ISP, the sending ESP, or a 3rd party Anti-Spam Organization to lodge a spam complaint. These complaints are taken very seriously.

Spam complaints can be detrimental to your reputation and should be well under the statistical thresholds outlined in the Esendex Acceptable Use Policy. Otherwise, your account may be temporarily or permanently suspended.

The Esendex Acceptable Use Policy also provides the rules that need to be observed to keep your spam rates down; here is a quick summary:

Emails can only be sent to recipients who have given explicit consent. The use of 3rd party lists is prohibited.
An unsubscribe link must be included in every marketing email. The link needs to be clearly visible and easy to use. Otherwise, your recipients may report your email as spam to stop receiving them.
Your sender name and domain must be communicated in every message. Your content should be relevant and reflect what your subscribers are expecting. Regular maintenance of your contact lists will ensure your emails are being sent to engaged readers.

“Bounced” Emails

The Bounce Rate is based on the total number of sent emails.

An email is declared as a “bounce” when it cannot be delivered to the recipient and is returned with an error message.

There are two types of bounces and Esendex handles each type differently:

Soft Bounce: This is a temporary issue such as the recipient’s inbox being full or a connection timeout.
Hard Bounce: This type of bounce occurs when an email cannot be delivered permanently due to reasons like an invalid email address (e.g., a mistyped address or a non-existent destination server) or when Esendex is unable to establish a connection with the recipient’s server, marking the email address as invalid or non-existent. Hard bounces can harm your sender reputation and result in automatic blocking by Esendex for 90 days.

Although Esendex will handle bounce emails, it is important to regularly remove bounced email addresses from your contact lists to avoid deliverability issues. You may wish to read the FAQ: How to maintain a list of responsive contacts.

Emails “Blocked” and “Pre-Blocked” by Esendex

One of Esendex email’s strengths is that it can anticipate certain deliverability problems and “block” an email from being sent when it has no chance of reaching the recipient’s inbox. This avoids causing an error on the recipient’s server that would negatively hurt your sender reputation.

To decide if an email should be blocked, The Esendex system examines several parameters including your sending history. Examples of why an email can be blocked include:

A recipient reported your email as Spam;
An email address that has already hard bounced;
An email that would have been classified as Spam based on its content. Before your campaigns are sent, our system scans the campaign using an anti-spam software to check for any potential ‘spam’ related triggers or issues. (e.g. ALL CAPS, poor text/image ratio, spammy words).

To check why an email was blocked, go to the Stats page and click on the subject line of a blocked email. The “details” column will show the reason of the block. If your email was “spam preblocked”, this means your email would have been classified as Spam by the recipient server.

“Retrying” Emails

Once a message reaches the Esendex servers, it is processed and relayed to our outgoing servers for sending. Our servers then communicate with the “outside world” (Gmail, Hotmail, etc) and the message is sent.

An email that is in status “retrying”, means we are attempting to deliver it and waiting for an update from the destination server. An update can take a couple seconds up to 24 hours. Once the 24 hours have passed, the emails is marked as a soft-bounce and will not be delivered.

Additional metrics explained

“Open” status

Total opens: The Total open number equals the total number of times that your campaign has been opened by all the recipients who have received it (multiples open events by a single or multiple recipients are counted).
Messages opened: Those are the Unique opens and are calculated by counting the first time a unique recipient opens the email (only first open by recipient is counted).
Average opens per message: This value shows the average number of times the campaign was opened by one recipient. It is calculated by dividing the total opens by opened messages.
Delivered messages opened: This value shows the percentage of opened emails from the total delivered messages.
Average open delay: This is the average time the recipients took to open the message after the reception of the message by the mailbox provider.

“Click” status

Total clicks: The Total click number equals the total number of times that the links in your messages have been clicked by all the recipients who have received it (multiple clicks on a link by a single recipient are counted too) .
Messages clicked: Those are the Unique clicks and are calculated by accounting for the first time that the recipients clicked on your message (only the first click on a link by a unique recipient is counted).
Average click per message: This value shows the average number of times a message was clicked by one recipient. It is calculated by dividing the total clicks by messages clicked.
Delivered message clicked: This value shows the percentage of clicked messages from the total delivered messages.
Average click delay: This is the average time the recipients took to click the message after the reception of the message by the mailbox provider.

“Unsubscribe” and “Spam” statuses

Total unsubscribed: The total unsubscribed number is simply the total number of all contacts that have unsubscribed from your campaign.
Delivered messages unsubscribed: This value shows the percentage of unsubscribed contacts from the total delivered messages.
Total marked as spam: This is the number of contacts that have marked your campaign as spam.
Delivered messages marked as spam: This value shows the percentage of messages marked as spam from the total delivered messages.

Email.

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