Leads that clicked not same on Email Performance and Email Link Performance Report

[Anonymous]

What's wrong with this picture?

29 does NOT equal 46 !

For the same e-mail send, for the same time period, the Email Performance report shows 29 unique leads that clicked a link.

Per the documentation:

Email Performance Report - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Clicked Link

Number of email recipients who clicked a link in the email.

For the same send, time period, etc. The Email Link Performance report shows 46 leads that clicked a link.

Email Link Performance Report - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Leads

The number of unique leads who clicked the link.

Marketo support has yet to prove itself to be any help in reconciling these two figures, and explaining how they can be different...

[Justin_Cooperm2]

See this

https://nation.marketo.com/message/112148#comment-112148

They measure different things.

[Anonymous]

Clearly they are measuring different things. But one wouldn't know it from reading the report, the documentation, or interacting with Marketo support.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

This one too:

Email Link Report and Email Performance Report show different numbers

[Anonymous]

Justin's prior explanation in Nov 2015 appears to be the best one:

Re: Email Link Performance Report + Smart List = Different Values?

Justin Cooperman Nov 30, 2015 3:14 PM (in response to Julie Than)

Yeah, so this makes sense. Here is a quick example for you.

-I send Email X containing 3 links to Lead A and Lead B.

-Lead A Clicks link #1 5 times and also clicks link #2 1 time. Link #3 is not clicked.

-Lead B Clicks link #1, #2, and #3 one time each.

I now go to Marketo and setup a Smart List with Filter "Clicked Link in Email -> Email is Email X"

I get 2 leads.

I now go to Marketo and navigate to Email Link Performance. I find Email X and view the results.

Link #1 shows: 6 Clicks, 66.6% Clicks, 2 Leads, 40% Leads

Link #2 shows: 2 Click, 22.2% Clicks, 2 Leads, 40% Leads

Link #3 shows: 1 Click, 11.1% Clicks, 1 Leads,  20% Leads

Total shows: 9 Clicks, 5 Leads

A bit confusing, but you can think of the total in the Email Link Performance report as Total # Clicks and Total # Unique Clicks. Because there is more than one link, if the same lead clicks several links that is more than one unique click.

[Anonymous]

The  TOTAL of the "Leads" column in the Email link performance report is actually a useless, meaningless number.

If I understand correctly, the TOTAL field increments by 1 every time a recipient clicks a link on an e-mail. It is NOT unique leads that clicked an e-mail, it is not total number of leads that clicked an e-mail, it is a simple counter that increments by one with every click.  And it's a misnomer to call it "leads" because leads are double, triple, etc. counted.

There is really no value to reporting the TOTAL figure, that I can see, but I'm open to someone else explaining how there is value in it.

Having re-read this a hundred times, I conclude that each ROW in the Leads column represents the number of unique leads that clicked that ROW's URL. But totaling that column makes no sense at all, because recipients will appear multiple times in different rows when they click 2 or more URLs.

The only numbers I can see valuable are the total number of clicks in the Email Link Performance report and the "Clicked Link" column from the Email Performance report which reports unique number of recipients who clicked on a link.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

People find value in all the numbers. Trust me, if we removed it some people wouldn't be pleased. That said, the language we use could be much improved. I 100% agree with that.

The "Leads" column isn't totally useless in the Email Link Performance report, as it does represent the "Unique Link Clicks" on the individual links in the email (and then also shows you the "Total Unique Link Clicks" for the entire email in the totals). The totals are what might be confusing you. Imagine there are two links in an email and one lead clicked on both links, then the totals will show "2 Leads". Use my guidance and change the language to "Total Unique Link Clicks" and it should make sense to you. The Email Link Performance Report is telling you at the link level, how many total clicks were there and how many unique clicks were there. At the entire email level (totals) it is telling you how many total clicks of any link in the email occurred, as well as how many unique clicks on any link in the email occurred.

[Anonymous]

>>The "Leads" column isn't totally useless in the Email Link Performance report, as it does represent the "Unique Link Clicks" on the individual links in the email

I'll agree with that. I revised my previous comment. Each row should be evaluated on it's own against the link URL.

And that's fine if some people find value in the Total of the column. Great. Leave it in for them. But update the documentation to better explain it. He tool tip help and documentation do nothing to clarify this, and the 1st level support folks don't know it.

[Anonymous]

Hey David,

I think the gist what Justin is saying is some people clicked multiple links in your email.

So overall 29 individuals clicked a link in your email but some of them clicked multiple links - so the link performance report is showing 46 clicks. (maybe 17 people clicked 2 links)

Thanks!

-Ryan

[Anonymous]

No, actually, I don't think that is correct. The total number of clicks, including people who clicked twice, shows up in the "clicks" column, which I blocked out in my screen grab. (The value is 51.)

The header on the report says "Leads" and the documentation explains that as "The number of unique leads who clicked the link."

So it doesn't make sense to say it's the total number of clicks.