For marketers, what comes after the email is just as important as the email itself. Email performance data is key to understanding the success of your marketing efforts, and a goldmine for insights to improve your future email sends.
That's why we're so excited to launch the new email performance pages. We've completely redesigned the user experience for viewing and understanding the performance of your emails after sending, with a slick new interface to boot. The updated UI also surfaces highly-requested new data on deliverability and engagement.
Read on to learn about everything that's new in these pages, and how you can use it to take your marketing to the next level.
Getting Started
You can see the new email performance pages for any of your sent emails. Simply log in, navigate to the Email tool from the Content menu in the main navigation, and select "Sent" from the filters on the left-hand side. Select any email from this list and you'll be taken to the Performance tab of the new post-send pages. Here you'll see some slick new graphs and you may notice some new data that wasn't in the old performance pages. Don't be overwhelmed—we'll go through each of these and how you might use them to analyze your email performance.
Email Information
The details of your email have been moved to a bar anchored across the top of the performance pages. By default, it shows a preview, the internal name of the email, sender, sent time and date, subject, and created date. You have the option to "Show more info" to expand and view full details. The email actions that used to be in the left-hand navigation (Clone, Send test email, Send to more, etc.) have now been moved to the top right, for easier access.
Performance Tab: Overview
The default view when you first visit the performance pages is the Overview section of the Performance tab. Here you'll see high-level metrics that let you see your email performance at a glance, with new graphs depicting Engagement (open and click rates), Deliverability (Delivered ÷ Sent) and Contacts Lost (% of contacts marked as ineligible for future sends).
Beneath these three is a line graph labeled "Engagement Over Time," charting the number of opens and clicks your email received over a period of time (you can choose between "First 24 hours", "First week", or "First month"). This becomes especially useful for automated emails, which are sent multiple times. You can use this data to ensure sustained engagement with your email, especially if you make any changes to it.
At the bottom of the Overview section, there are two charts depicting engagement by device type. The left one shows the percentage of Opens by Device Type, split by desktop and mobile, with the unknowns (resulting from Gmail data limitations). The chart to the right shows Clicks by Device Type, once again broken down by desktop and mobile. This Device Type data can help you better target your content; for example, if you find certain emails are read more on mobile devices, you can design the template to be mobile-friendly and write more concise copy.
Performance Tab: Sent
The next section in the Performance tab is "Sent." If you've ever wondered why there's a difference between the number of contacts you selected and the number of contacts to whom the email was sent, this is where you would go for an answer. We won't send emails to your contacts who have somehow indicated previously that they don't want them. This means they have either unsubscribed, marked a previous email as spam, or hard bounced in our system before.
Performance Tab: Delivered
Next comes the "Delivered" section. The focus here is digging into the deliverability of this email—you can take a look at the delivery rate, as well as the number of contacts for whom the email soft bounced, hard bounced, or is pending. Click any of the numbers of contacts (in parenthesis) and you'll be taken to a list of those contacts, for further investigation.
Performance Tab: Opened
Now for some the metrics you came here for, we turn to the "Opened" section. At the top is the number of opens, with the open rate calculated for you. To the right is a condensed version of the "Engagement Over Time" graph, showing opens and clicks over time, from the "Overview" section.
If you scroll down you'll encounter a new chart, showing "Time Spent Viewing Email." Here we're showing you how many seconds your recipients stayed on your email, broken out into "Glanced" (0-2 seconds), "Skim read" (2-8 seconds), and "Read" (8+ seconds). This information can be used to gauge the success of your email depending on its length, as well as the depth of engagement from your contacts.
Beneath that, you'll see the same "Opens by Device Type" chart from the "Overview" section. To the right, we've also mapped out for you the "Opens by Email Client." This is important information for optimizing the content and layout of your emails, as they often render differently in different email clients. For example, if you discover that most of your contacts are opening your emails in Outlook, you'll want to spend more time making sure everything is formatted to display properly for them.
Performance Tab: Clicked
Moving on, the next section here "Clicked." You'll notice the top half of this page looks very similar to that of the previous section—this one also includes high-level data on clicks and a version of the "Engagement Over Time" graph.
The bottom half gets more interesting. The "Clicked Links" chart breaks down the number and percentage of clicks on each specific link in your email, with a graphical depiction to help you quickly grasp what the numbers mean. This data is vital in measuring the effectiveness of email in your funnel, ensuring that your contacts are moving to the next step by clicking on the correct links.
The Device Type and Browser charts are similar to those which appear in the "Opened" section, providing another dimension for your analysis by looking at clicks.
Performance Tab: Contacts Lost
Understanding your lost contacts is key to cultivating a healthy email list. In the "Contacts Lost" section, we take a look at the reasons why any contacts became ineligible from this email send. They can become ineligible by unsubscribing, marking the email as spam, or if the email hard bounces.
Recipients Tab
As much great data appears in the Performance tab, many of us also want to dig into the list of recipients to see what individual interactions occurred with the email. When you first open the Recipients tab, you'll land on the full list of contacts you selected to receive the email. You can then filter the recipient list by clicking on each status, and you can always export these filtered lists or create new lists with them for further analysis.
In the lists that appear here, you'll see an option to "Show details" for each recipient. If you click this, it will expand to show you the entire timeline of that recipient's interaction with this email, with time-stamped events for sent, delivered, opened, and specific clicks. This is true for each of the filters with the exception of "Not Sent." Which brings me to...
Recipients Tab: Not Sent
Upon first look, the list of "Not Sent" recipients looks the same as the others. However, when you expand the contact to "Show details," it shows the moment he or she became ineligible from a previous email. This includes details on unsubscribes and bounces, with the response we received from their email server to help you if you intend to investigate further.
Let us know what you think about the new email performance pages and how you plan to use them to analyze and improve your marketing.
