Discrepancies in email metrics

[ailsadempsey]

Hello,

I'm hoping to get some insight into the discrepancies we are seeing in volumes of email delivered between the dashboard, report and smart list. 

For email 1, we have these results:

• Dashboard (which includes internal seed list of 3 people) - 100
• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 97
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 98

Email 2:

• Dashboard (which includes internal seed list of 3 people) - 211
• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 208
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 210

Email 3:

• Dashboard (which includes internal seed list of 3 people) - 475
• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 472
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 474

I had read on the Community that the reason that the Smart List number may be higher than the report is from the system logging bounces after the email is marked as delivered, so the volume delivered on the report may decrease over time. I thought this must be the reason for the discrepancy so I ran these Smart Lists:

Email 1:

• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 97
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 98
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and (Email Bounced or Email Bounced Soft)) - 1

Email 2:

• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 208
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 210
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and (Email Bounced or Email Bounced Soft)) - 4

Email 3:

• Report (Smart List removing seed list) - 472
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and Not Member of seed list) - 474
• Smart List (Was Delivered Email and (Email Bounced or Email Bounced Soft)) - 7

For emails 2 and 3, looking at those who had delivered and bounced actually removed too many people from the potential Smart List (compared to report). Internal colleagues are looking for exports of those who have received (as well as opened, clicked etc) these sends so I was wondering if anyone could provide any more context as to why there might be these discrepancies? I am assuming that the report is the most reliable number. 

Finally, when I ran a Smart List for email 1 using the parameters Was Delivered Email and (Not Email Bounced or Not Email Bounced Soft) and Not Member of seed list, I still got 98 people coming back in the list when I know there was one delivered and bounced. Do you know why this might be?

Many thanks!

[Katja_Keesom]

Hi Ailsa,

It is true that you cannot compare stats one on one like that. There's several differences between the approaches that will almost certainly result in discrepancies.  As an example, it is entirely possible to have a soft bounce still followed by a delivery. Therefore you cannot subtract your bounces from your sends and assume you get your total deliveries. Also, I am aware the Email Performance Report backfills an Open if a Click is registered, where the Open is not shown in the Activity log. I would not be surprised if the same would occur with Delivered being backfilled if an Open or Click is registered. Another thing that can cause discrepancies is deleting leads from the database. The email performance report will still include these in the stats, whereas a smart list will not.

There's loads of previous threads on the Nation around this topic, so if you would like to understand more detail it is worth having a browse around.

Kind regards,
Katja