Hi,
In my report chart summary, its says there were 96 opens. I know this is not true as my mailing list only contained 96 addresses and there were 4 bounces. So then, what does it mean.
In the written summary next to the chart, it say 17 unique opens. This I take to mean that only 17 people actually opened my mail, right?
More confusing is that one person subscribed to my mailing list. To do this he must have opened the mail. But the report says he did not open the mail. How can this be?
thanks for the patience with the noobie questions.
Hi Robin
There is a difference between the two numbers that appear next to "HTML Opens" on your report.
The Total Opens is the number of times your campaign was opened across all the email addresses that it was sent to. The Unique Opens is the number of individual recipients that have opened your campaign. Both these figures include test messages you may have sent yourself. If you look at the detailed report of "Opened - which recipients opened your campaign" (found under Subscriber Activity) you will see the email addresses that opened, as well as the number of times each opened your campaign.
The open rate shown in the report of your campaign will always be lower than reality, because of the privacy settings on recipients' computers. How TouchBasePro tracks the opens, is we inserts an invisible tracking image that will remain on our server into every copy of every campaign that goes out through the system. When an email comes into Outlook, there is a bar on top that says "Click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of some pictures in this message." Now, when someone clicks on that bar to download images, they download our invisible tracking image. That then gives us the signal that the subscriber opened the mail. We also track an open by any active hyperlinks clicked on the campaign (excluding the ones in the automatic footer that is inserted, containing the unsubscribe link etc). So, if a subscriber receives your email but doesn’t click to download the pictures or use a link, it is entirely feasible that they did receive and read your email, but we can’t track the open.
One way you can get a more accurate rate of opens is by not including the images in your email. When you choose not to include inline images, the campaign will come into the inbox only reflecting the text, otherwise where the pictures would be are just white squares with the same “click here to download pictures” message. This will force more of your subscribers to download the pictures to view the campaign in full, thus at the same time downloading our tracking image. Some people prefer a more accurate open rate by not including images, some prefer aesthetics and would rather have their subscribers view the campaign right the first time. The choice is yours. (To not include inline images with your campaign, look under advanced options on Step One - Header options of a new campaign)
With regards to the person that subscribed to your campaign, the chances are that one of your recipients forwarded your campaign to a friend of theirs (rather than using the send to friend link), and the new subscriber added themselves by means of the subscribe link in your footer. They won't reflect on the opened list because TouchBasePro doesn't track the subscribe link as an open.