Finding which email client is being used

[Anonymous]

Does Marketo have the ability to tell us what email client our leads are reading emails on? Maybe there's a report or a work around in a smart list that I just haven't found yet? Knowing this information is key for many reasons, but especially when trying to design new email templates, keeping in mind those clients that our audience is on.

I've figured out how to tell iOS vs Android, now I just need email clients! 

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Sara,

I think the only way to know what browser the person is using is buy purchasing Marketo's email delieverability package but if there is a work around, I would love to hear it as well! 

[Josh_Hill13]

This is not true. The 250ok service does not provide a breakdown of the count of people using a specific device, platform, or browser.

You can try to use the Clicked Link in Email constraint of Platform or Device, but the results will be similar. There is a Browser option, but I can't get it to show me any values.

[SanfordWhiteman]

@Sara M use an Opened Email filter and type in the User-Agent identifier.  For example, this filter shows leads using Microsoft Outlook 2013 (part of "MSOffice 15," 15 being the internal version number for Office 2013):



However, be careful to remember: these are people who read your emails with images enabled.  That's a subset of the people who read your emails.  The only ones you will know about are the ones who download the tracking pixel, but that leaves out many leads -- or even most, depending on your lead culture.

[JD_Nelson]

Sanford Whiteman is there a list of popular browser values to expand on this? You reference version numbers and such, where can I find the most popular?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Well, for pure browsers this'll give you a glimpse of the permutations: UserAgentString.com - List of User Agent Strings​. But it doesn't include the separately identifiable mail clients with HTML renderers (like Outlook).

This file is derived from the BrowserScope UA list: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tobie/ua-parser/master/regexes.yaml

[Ayush_Aggarwal1]

Hi Sanford,

Can I pull Browser info, device info in the column view under People's tab?

Regards,

Ayush Aggarwal

[SanfordWhiteman]

Couple more things on this:

• Leads read with multiple clients all the time. If you get an open from iOS Mail and an open from Outlook 2010 for the same lead, do you give that the same significance as you would two different leads?
• If you know Outlook disables images by default and Gmail does not, do you really have a level playing field to publish "who-read-with-what" reports without significant disclaimers?
• Some mail apps are indistinguishable from the rendering engine they use for HTML email.  For example, based on some tests just now, you can't distinguish a person accessing webmail in Safari 6 from a person using Apple Mail on a Mac that has that same version of Safari 6 (the User-Agent is the same because Apple Mail uses Safari to render).  That doesn't necessarily mean they both see your images -- yet if they do both see all your content, they could potentially see it rendered in exactly the same way (if the webmail app itself doesn't modify the message body!). So from the standpoint of content design they might be the same or different. It's complex.
• My email client allows me to switch rendering engines between IE -- whatever version is installed on the machine, from 8 on up! -- to its internal, much more primitive but presumably super-secure HTML renderer. OK, that's a fringe case... but it's another moving part to consider instead of thinking of mail clients as monolithic.