Opened emails in email performance report don´t match with opened email filter in smartlist

[Mariana]

Hello,

I´ve created an email performance report:

and to see whose people from the database opened the emails, created a smartlist, as shown below:

However, in the results, it just shows 2 people in the first one 5a and 3 people in 5b. 

Has it something to do with how the smartlist is built? Am I missing something? 

How can the numbers don´t match?

Thank you!

[jsiebert]

@Mariana - There's quite a few factors on why this isn't a 1:1 match. Opens in the e-mail performance report are counted from the tracking pixel on your e-mail that catches opens, which can easily be duped by mail clients scanning your e-mail. If you have deleted leads from your database, you will not be able to see those opens in your smart list but you would still see the open rate with their open within the performance report.

I recommend not stressing too much about open rates since it's become a tough metric to base success on 🙂 

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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Opens in the e-mail performance report are counted from the tracking pixel on your e-mail that catches opens, which can easily be duped by mail clients scanning your e-mail.

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The disparity is more the other way. Opens in a Smart List are (solely) counted from tracking pixel downloads. Opens in the EPR are counted from downloads and from clicks which are treated as implicit opens.

So they basically use different definitions of opens: “was an invisible tracking pixel downloaded” vs. “was it generally possible that a human looked at this email”.