Measuring Campaign Performance with Reports

What Reports show

After a campaign sends, the Reports view (and each campaign's stats) tell you how it performed. StretchMail tracks four numbers that build on each other:

• Sends — how many recipients the campaign was queued to.
• Sent — how many were actually delivered.
• Opened — how many recipients opened the email.
• Clicked — how many clicked a link inside it.

From these you get open rate (opened ÷ sent) and click rate (clicked ÷ sent) — the two headline metrics for any campaign.

Step 1 — Open a campaign's stats

1. Go to StretchMail → Campaigns (or Reports).
2. Select a sent campaign.
3. Review the summary: subject, status, recipient count, send time, and the sends / opened / clicked tallies with their rates.

Step 2 — Drill into the send log

Each campaign has a per-recipient send log. For every recipient it shows:

• email and status (queued, sent, or failed),
• sent at — when it was delivered,
• opened at — when they first opened it (blank if never),
• clicked at and click count — when and how many times they clicked,
• error — the reason, if a send failed.

This is where you find out who engaged, not just how many — useful for follow-up and for spotting delivery failures.

Step 3 — Read the numbers

• A healthy open rate for most audiences sits in the 20–40% range; your own baseline matters more than any benchmark.
• Click rate shows whether your call to action landed. A high open rate with a low click rate usually means the subject over-promised or the CTA was weak.
• Failed sends in the log point to bad addresses or delivery problems — clean those addresses off your list.

Step 4 — Use the Dashboard for the big picture

The Dashboard rolls up your campaign activity — how many are draft, queued, and sent — alongside your inbox and audience counters. It's the at-a-glance view; Reports is where you dig into a single campaign.

Worked example

Payne Coaching Co. reviews last month's newsletter:

• Sends 45 · Sent 45 · Opened 21 · Clicked 9.
• Open rate ≈ 47%, click rate ≈ 20% — strong for a small, engaged list.
• The send log shows 2 recipients opened 4+ times and clicked the worksheet link — Beau flags them as warm leads.
• One address shows failed with a bounce error; he removes it from the list to protect deliverability.

Next month he keeps the same tone but tightens the CTA to lift the click rate.

Tips

• Compare against yourself, not benchmarks. Track your own open/click trend over time — that's the signal that matters.
• Mine the send log for leads. Multiple clicks from one recipient is a strong buying signal.
• Prune failed addresses immediately. Repeated bounces hurt your domain reputation.
• A/B by subject across campaigns. Since sent campaigns are locked, test subject styles across consecutive sends and compare open rates.

FAQ

Why is a recipient's "opened" blank?
Open tracking relies on a tracking pixel; some inboxes block images, so a real reader can show as unopened. Treat open rate as directional, not exact.

What counts as a click?
Any click on a tracked link in the email body. The click count shows repeat clicks from the same recipient.

Do opens and clicks update live?
Engagement is recorded as it happens, so the numbers climb for a while after the send as recipients get to their inboxes.

Troubleshooting

• Zero opens on a sent campaign. Either it just went out (give it time), or image-blocking is suppressing pixel tracking — check clicks, which are more reliable.
• Sends but no Sent. Delivery may be queued because sending isn't enabled yet; check the Engine card and Fixing sending and delivery problems.
• Rates look off. Remember open/click rates are calculated against sent, not total list size — unsubscribed contacts were never mailed.