How to check the results of an email

After you’ve sent an email, you should monitor how it performs to learn what makes an email more successful and engaging.

By clicking on a Sent email in the Emails section you will open that email’s review page. Here you can see:

• the initial audience it was sent to
• who it was successfully delivered to
• who opened and engaged with the email

Delivery Reports 

Delivery Reports show the recipients who have successfully received the email that Organise sent. There are a number of issues that can result in an email never reaching a person’s inbox despite us attempting to send it. Some of them may be blocked from sending by our bulk email provider, while others may be sent back by the individual’s email account. 

Email reports are broken down into three elements, "Sent", "Delivered" and "Opened"

"Sent" displays the audience details.  Clicking on the "Sent" header displays a summary of the email transmission using a progress bar showing the success of the delivery as a percentage of the total.  The percentage is displayed to the left of the progress bar and a numerical total is displayed to the right of the progress bar.  To the far right of the progress bar there is a hyperlink titled "View details" with a drop down arrow, selecting this opens the details of the transmission. If an individual has not received the email a listing of the individual email transmissions are displayed and a status indicates why the email failed to reach the recipient.  

Selecting the three dots will allow the author to jump to viewing the individual recipients account. 

"Delivered" displays similar information to that seen under the "Sent" element, except the information is related to the delivered emails and the reason for non delivery is listed below the summary.

"Opened" displays similar information to that seen under the "Delivered" element, except the information relates to opened emails and the status "Opened" is displayed in the details list.

The different issues you will see on this page are:

• Unsubscribed via Organise – this person has clicked on “Manage Notifications" or "Unsubscribe” at the bottom of Organise emails, or they have clicked an automatic “Unsubscribe” button built into their inbox. Both of these systems send a signal to our provider and blocks all our emails from coming through (even constitutional ones), and we can’t change it using our systems. The supporter will need to go to labour.org.uk/resubscribe to change it themselves. For more information about people unsubscribing from our emails, see Understanding Unsubscribes.
• Complaint or AbuseReport – this person has unsubscribed using one of the methods above, but has also marked our emails as spam, either by complaining in the unsubscribe form with our email provider or by reporting it to their email service. They can resubscribe by going to labour.org.uk/resubscribe.
• Spam - our email provider believed your email was too similar to Spam emails and so automatically blocked it. Try editing your email and resending, or get in contact with the Organise team.
• Email address invalid or Invalid – our email provider received an error saying this address does not exist. If our email provider receives this error once, they won’t try this email address again for any future emails and you will see an error every time. If their email is still correct they can reset their status by going to labour.org.uk/resubscribe, or if it isn’t correct you can change their email in Admin Hub for members and ex-members, or in Organise for non-members.
• Account Problem – there is something wrong with the email account of this recipient. For example, their inbox is full and cannot accept more emails. Most often this means that the email account is no longer being used. We may try and resend the email depending on the exact error we received. You can fix this by changing their email in Admin Hub for members and ex-members, and in Organise for non-members. 
• DNS Problem – our email provider was unable to find this email service (e.g. @gmail.com). Most likely there is a typo in the address or it uses a provider which is no longer active. You can fix this by changing their email in Admin Hub for members and ex-members, and in Organise for non-members.
• Timeout, SPFProblem, Code Error, WhitelistingProblem or GreyListed – the email was not successfully delivered due to a connection issue or other problem with our email system, but will be retried for 48 hours after the initial sending time.
• Throttled - this email hit one of the errors above and was retried for 48 hours after sending but was never successfully delivered
• NotDelivered, Failed, ConnectionProblem or BlackListed – This person’s email service has rejected the email, or given us a different error to the one’s outlined above and this email will not be retried. Get in contact with the Organise team if you’d like us to investigate this specific error. In most cases this is an issue with the supporter’s email account and can be fixed by changing their email address.

Engagement Reporting is shown under the "Opened" status

An Engagement summary report is available by selecting view details to the right of the "Opened" progress bar.  tracks the impact of your email for the group of people that successfully received it.

The most important things we track are Opens and Clicks.

If you have a relevant sender identity, and an interesting subject line and preview, people are more likely to open your email and read what you have to say.

By making the content of your email compelling, and asking your supporters to complete a specific, timely action, people are more likely to click on the content you are directing them to.

For more information on improving email engagement, see Writing Effective Emails

We also track any negative impact of your email:

• Unsubscribed - This person has unsubscribed with our email provider using one of the methods mentioned above.
• Marked as Spam - This person has either unsubscribed and said our emails as spam, or reported it as spam to their email service. If we have too many users who mark our emails as spam our email provider will review our account and take steps to reduce the number of complaints. This could include being stricter on blocking some low-quality emails it thinks are spam, or starting to block any emails going to contacts who aren’t opening any of our emails. It is important that the party tries to only send high-quality emails and the Organise team will review emails that receive too many spam reports and risk our reputation and our ability to provide a comprehensive service.