Performance Reporting: The Nitty Gritty of “Open Email” Activity

[Ruchi_Lapran1]

⚠️ This post has been edited by a moderator for clarity.

Performance reporting in Marketo plays a crucial role in analyzing and optimizing marketing campaigns. However, discrepancies in reported numbers can occur due to various factors, particularly related to the timing and order of activity logs.

During my analysis of email performance for a client, I encountered unexpected activity where active leads were marked as invalid. These were leads that were actively responding to their emails. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the leads were marked as inactive before their open activity was logged.

In my research, I came across product documentation, discussions, and similar posts where others had experienced similar issues. People shared their challenges and the solutions they implemented. In this post, I aim to compile the potential causes behind performance reporting discrepancies related to open activity and gather further insights.

1. There may be a slight delay between opening the email and the activity appearing in the log.
2. Marketo records an "open email” activity only when the images in the email, specifically a single-pixel tracking image, are downloaded. It's possible that recipients are receiving and viewing the emails without downloading the images, which would not be counted as an "open."
3. Text-only emails, lacking images, will never generate an open activity.
4. If open activity is not visible for a lead with a given Email Address, even though you believe images are being downloaded, it's important to check for another lead with the same Email Address (duplicate lead) that might be logging the activity instead.
5. For certain email service providers (e.g., Outlook), many people might view the email in the preview pane instead of opening it, or they might have images turned off. In such cases, open activity will not be logged.

Segmenting leads into marketable and non-marketable categories is a good practice, but it's even more effective to enrich them with behavioral attributes.

I welcome additional thoughts and insights on this matter.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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For certain email service providers (e.g., Outlook), many people might view the email in the preview pane instead of opening it

To be clear, an open from the Preview pane, i.e. “previewing” an email, does download the tracking pixel and is considered an Email Open. It has to be, because the image is downloaded.

People are sometimes confused in the other direction: an Email Open is logged, but at a human level the person just glanced at the email and then deleted it. But if the mail client chooses to download the image in that brief period, that’s an open.

This post is still current on these points.

[Katja_Keesom]

It is indeed important to also include the notion of the reverse happening. Some email clients download images as a default as soon as the email hits your inbox, so that would result in someone "opening" all of your emails even without them personally seeing any of your content.

That is precisely why email opens are a good indicator comparing the performance of different emails with each other, but I would never recommend taking follow up action on any individual opening an email, as there is no way to interpret whether that was a human activity or not.

Even link clicks are tricky in that sense, as the battle with interpreting mail scanner activtity is always ongoing, but personally I would not base any actions on individual email opens.