Dispatch is capable of tracking various analytics and metrics about your campaigns, communications and messages.

Getting to analytics

You can access your analytics from three locations: the campaign list page, the campaign details page, and the communication details page. The initial metric shown is the total number of messages delivered in the past 14 days. You can drill down into more analytics through the "More Analytics" link.

Reporting Period

The default reporting period is for activity in the past two weeks (14 days). Additional reporting periods are available as well as setting a custom reporting period.

Please note that some analytics are not kept forever. Interaction timeline and user agent metrics are kept only for two years from the time they are collected.

Activity Summary

The activity summary report gives you an overview of messages in your client, campaign or communication with metrics on opens, link clicks, deliveries, and user agents/devices.

Metrics Explained

Messages generated

These are the messages generated during the reporting period. This includes those that might have had problems sending, but excluding those skipped as a result of the recipient being on a suppression list.

Total messages with problems

These are the messages associated with either an error or warning and were not delivered.

Total messages delivered

The number of messages generated minus the number of messages with problems. The rate displayed is the percentage of the number messages delivered divided by the total number messages generated.

Average delivery rate

The throughput during the sending phase of Dispatch's batch process. The time elapsed used in the calculation includes all destinations specified in the communication setup.

Messages that have been opened

Messages which have been opened/read at least once. The open rate displayed is the percentage of opens divided by the number of messages delivered.

Total unique opens

The total number of times an open/read event has been recorded. If a user is using a reading pane in their email client we may record multiple open/read events.

Messages that have been clicked

Messages that have at least one link clicked once or more (aka Click Throughs). Tracking link clicks depends on having Link Tracking enabled for your communication. The click rate displayed is the percentage of messages with clicks divided by the number of messages delivered.

Total unique clicks

The total number of clicks records. Recipients may click a link more than once.

Messages with social interactions

Messages that have had a user interact with the Tweet, Facebook Share, Facebook Like or Email Forward functionality integrated with Dispatch. These interactions do not count towards link clicks.

Total Facebook shares

The total number of times the Facebook Share button/link has been used for a message.

Total Facebook likes

The total number of times the Facebook Like button/link has been used for a message.

Total Tweets

The total number of times the Twitter Tweet button/link has been used for a message.

Total email forwards

The total number of times the Forward button/link has been used for a message.

Interaction Timeline

Open and click interactions are displayed in chart form for the reporting period. Event totals are aggregated every minute and you can zoom in a portion of the timeline by clicking and dragging in the plot area. After you've zoomed in, you can revert back to the default view by clicking the "Reset zoom" button.

At this time, social interactions are not displayed on the plot as in comparison to opens and clicks, there are far fewer of those events.

User Agents/Devices

A breakdown of the device types used to view your messages is shown as a pie chart. To view the specific user agents comprising the device type, click the device type of interest. You can revert back to the device type view by clicking the "Back to Device Types" button. The device type breakdown is:

Desktop

Traditional email clients on a desktop like Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc..

Mobile

Mobile device like iOS and Android including tablets.

Web

Email viewed through a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc..

Unknown

Agents that don't fall into the above categories like bots, spiders. We try to filter those out, but some like Gmail are relevant to include.

The top 10 user agents are listed. This is helpful for you direct the testing of your messages to insure your message content is rendering satisfactory in the most popular email clients.

The user agents shown might not make a lot of sense unless you are familiar with the underlying technologies used by devices and email clients. Here are some of the more popular user agents explained:

Mobile Safari UI WKWebView (Mobile)

Email client on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad)

Apple Mail (Desktop)

The HTML rendering engine used by Apple Mail and Outlook 2016 for Mac

Outlook v16

Microsoft Outlook 2016 on Windows

Outlook 2010 v14

Microsoft Outlook 2010 on Windows

Outlook iOS

Outlook app on iOS (iPhone, iPad)

Chrome Mobile WebView (Mobile)

Android's default email client

Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge v##(Web)

Webmail clients (e.g. Outlook Web Access) accessed through a traditional browser on a desktop PC

Safari (Web)

Webmail clients (e.g. Outlook Web Access) accessed through the Safari web browser on a desktop. This is not the Safari browser on an iOS device.

Firefox 3 v3 (Web)

These are most likely bots that made it through our bot filter. Ignore them.

GmailImageProxy (Desktop)

Gmail sends all image downloads through their own proxy servers. This agent is the same for all client types (Mobile, Web, Desktop) where Gmail is accessed.

Some older user agents that you might also see are:

Apple WebKit (Mobile)

Email client on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad)

Chrome Mobile v## (Mobile)

Android's default email client

Firefox 11 v11 (Unknown)

This one is misleading. This is actually Gmail's image proxy so we can infer this as any Gmail client.

Open Report

Opens are a measure of how many recipients have read your email message.

How we track opens

Dispatch tracks the first time a message is opened using a one pixel invisible GIF image embedded in the email message. Open tracking must be enabled on the communication for Dispatch to track open events. When the image is downloaded, Dispatch marks the message as opened. See E-Mail Server for more info on how to enabled/disable open tracking..

Accuracy of tracking

It is important to understand that this measure is not 100% accurate. Dispatch, like other email marketing tools, depends on the email client being able to display HTML email and download images to record a read. If a recipient's email client cannot render HTML email or they have downloading images disabled, we will not record an open event. Generally, the open rate could be between 20-30% higher than reported because of the limitations of using a pixel to track the open event.

If we have not recorded an open event and a recipient clicks on a link in the message, we will mark the message as opened.

Multiple opens by the same recipient

Dispatch may record multiple open events for a single message. A recipient might be reading the message multiple times, but the recording of multiple open events could be attributed to other reasons. If a recipient has a preview pane enabled in their email client, that can inadvertently trigger open events as they scroll through their messages. If they forward the email using their email client's forward function, additional recipients will share the same tracking pixel and record additional open events for the original recipient.

Open reporting

The detailed report of Opens shows a table of all the recipients in the reporting period where Dispatch has recorded an open event.

Unlike the Activity Summary and Link Click reports, the Open Report restricts the results based on the send date of the messages rather than the activity date. This difference is due to the fact that you can report on the absence of an activity (unopened).

There are three available actions:

• Export to Excel: saves the results of the report as an Excel XLSX file
• Export to CSV: saves the results of the report as a comma-delimited file
• Create population: exports the results to a new CSV-based population. This is useful if you want to do a follow-up communication to all the members of a communication who have opened the message.

Link Click Report

Link clicks are a measure of how many recipients are engaging with your messages.

How we track link clicks

Link click tracking is enabled by default on communications, but may be disabled at your discretion. Any link in a message will be rewritten so the user is directed through Dispatch to record the link click before being redirected to the intended destination. See E-Mail Server for more information on how to enable/disable link tracking.

Dispatch also supports link tracking in SMS message. Because there is a limit on how long a SMS message can be before it is split into multiple messages by the mobile carrier, Dispatch will use a shorter method of rewriting the URLs in your messages. In order for Dispatch to properly detect links in your messages, URLs must start with HTTP://, HTTPS://, or www.. An example of the rewritten link would be: https://apps.its.uiowa.edu/dispatch/l/4re0LM. If you need even shorter links use a service like Bitly. However, the analytics will not be available in Dispatch.

Accuracy of link tracking

Unlike open tracking, link tracking is 100% accurate.

Multiple link clicks by the same recipient

Each link click is tracked so it is possible for a single recipient to have several recorded clicks for a single link.

Link click reporting

Each link that has been clicked is presented in the top table. The following metrics are displayed in summary for each link.

Link

Reporting is for links that have had their query parameters (everything after the '?') removed.

Total clicks

This metric is the total number of times the link was clicked. Links can be clicked multiple times.

Percentage of clicks

This metric shows the percentage of all clicks recorded that are for the given link.

Unique Users

This metric shows the number of unique recipients that clicked this link.

Link Penetration

This metric shows the percentage of all messages sent that had at least one click recorded for the given link.

Clicking and highlighting on a link gives a detailed view of all the recipients who clicked that link during the reporting period. The detailed view of recipients who clicked a link can be exported as an Excel or CSV file or used to generate a new CSV-based population.

First Clicked at

Indicates the date and time the recipient clicked the link for the first time.

Time to First Click

Shows the time elasped between when the email was sent by Dispatch and when the recipient first clicked the link.

Total clicks

This is the count of the number of times the recipient clicked the link in the email.