Analytics
Track campaign performance with real-time analytics. Monitor opens, clicks, bounces, and more to optimize your email marketing.
Dashboard Overview
The campaign analytics dashboard shows key metrics at a glance. Each campaign has its own analytics page accessible from the campaign detail view.
Key Metrics
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Sent | number | No | Total emails dispatched to recipients |
Delivered | number | No | Emails accepted by the recipient mail server |
Opened | people | No | People whose open or click GoodPostal could stand behind. Apple auto-downloads, bots and unverified requests are listed under the card but never counted here |
Clicked | people | No | People who clicked at least one link, with how many clicked a content link rather than view-in-browser or an unsubscribe page |
Bounces | number | No | Emails that could not be delivered (hard or soft bounce) |
Complaints | number | No | Recipients who marked the email as spam |
Unsubscribes | number | No | Recipients who clicked the unsubscribe link |
Open Tracking
Opens are measured with a tiny invisible tracking pixel in each email. When a recipient loads images, the pixel is requested and the open is recorded. Who serves that pixel depends on your setup:
- With a verified tracking domain (or a generic SMTP sender), GoodPostal adds the pixel itself and serves it from your own tracking domain, so the request never touches a third party's domain.
- Without one, your email sending service handles tracking natively on its own domain and reports each open to GoodPostal by webhook. GoodPostal adds no pixel of its own in this mode.
Either way the numbers land in the same dashboard. See Tracking Domain for which services require one and how to set yours up.
Who counts as opened or clicked
Not every request for the tracking pixel or a link comes from a person. Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads every email in the background whether or not anyone reads it, corporate mail scanners open and click every link before the recipient sees the message, and some mail apps load images seconds after delivery before anyone looks. GoodPostal records every one of these requests and sorts each into one of four kinds:
- Opened or Clicked: an observed request, one that looked like a mail app or a browser at a plausible time, with no sign of automation. Only observed activity counts on the cards, in the rates, and in the industry comparison.
- Apple auto-downloads: Apple Mail loading the email in the background, read or not. The email reached an Apple Mail user; whether it was read is unknown.
- Unverified: a load with no mail app identified, a fetch within seconds of delivery, or a request from an address a scanner also used. Treated as background activity: it never counts toward opens or clicks, and it is never called a bot on address evidence alone.
- Bots: a security scanner, a burst of clicks faster than a reader could make, automation software, or a request your sending service flagged as a bot. These are patterns, not proof; that is why they are kept out of the count rather than reported as anything else.
Clicks are the more reliable signal. A person who opens in Apple Mail without clicking is invisible to every email platform in 2026; a click survives the checks above.
The Activity tab lists every open and click a person made, as often as they made it, so a supporter who came back to the email three times shows three opens. Apple Mail hides repeat reads; Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo show them. Turn on Show all activity on a campaign page to see every request instead, counted as requests rather than people, with each one labelled. The device chart is titled Devices seen on clicks because Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo hide the device on opens. The activity export lists observed opens and clicks with an Assessment and a Reason column; tick Include all activity to export every request.
Campaigns sent before this sorting was introduced keep the numbers they had and say so on the page until their history is classified.
Click Tracking
Click tracking follows the same split as open tracking. When GoodPostal owns tracking, meaning you have a verified tracking domain or a generic SMTP sender, it rewrites the links in your campaign, records the click, and redirects the recipient to the original destination. Otherwise your sending service wraps the links itself and reports each click to GoodPostal by webhook.
The most-clicked-links report works in both cases, so you can see which links drew the most interest either way.
Bounce Handling
Bounces are reported by your email sending service via webhooks. GoodPostal categorizes them into two types:
- Hard bounce - Permanent delivery failure (e.g., address does not exist). The contact is automatically unsubscribed to protect your sender reputation.
- Soft bounce - Temporary delivery failure (e.g., mailbox full). A single soft bounce does not unsubscribe anyone, but a contact who accumulates 3 bounces is unsubscribed automatically to protect your sender reputation.
Complaint Tracking
When a recipient marks your email as spam, the complaint is reported through your sending service's webhook. GoodPostal automatically unsubscribes the contact to prevent future sends.
A complaint rate above 0.1% is a serious warning sign. If this happens, review your sending practices, list quality, and content relevance.
Rate Calculations
- Delivery rate = (delivered / sent) x 100
- Open rate = (people opened / delivered) x 100
- Click rate = (people clicked / delivered) x 100
- Bounce rate = (bounces / sent) x 100
- Unsubscribe rate = (unsubscribes / delivered) x 100
- Complaint rate = (complaints / delivered) x 100
Industry Benchmarks
The comparison on each campaign page uses the Brevo 2026 report (2025 data, United States, marketing emails), which publishes open rates without Apple privacy opens; how it treats other automated activity is not stated. GoodPostal also leaves out suspected automation and unverified activity, so Open Rate and Click Rate show the difference without a grade. Bounce rate keeps an earlier compiled figure with its own source line. Nonprofits also see the M+R 2026 newsletter click rate. As a general guide:
- Open rate: 13-23% without Apple privacy opens, by industry
- Click rate: 1.5-2.6%
- Bounce rate: Below 2%
- Complaint rate: Below 0.1%
Webhook Events
Analytics data is powered by webhook events from your email sending service. Make sure webhooks are properly configured to get accurate tracking. See the webhooks guide for setup instructions.