Here are the key terms you will see in your email activity reports:
Total Recipients: The total number of people to which the message was sent. If you send to more than one list, this would be the aggregate number of contacts across all of the lists.
Unique Recipients: The number of individual people to which the message was sent. If you send to more than one list, this would be the count of unique individuals across those lists. The system removes any duplication automatically when you send to multiple overlapping lists at the same time.
Delivered: This is the unique number of emails that were delivered to valid addresses. This number is often less than the number of recipients for a number of reasons. For instance, no delivery attempt will be made on an email address that has previously bounced and known as Undeliverable. Over time the system will remember the undeliverable addresses and the difference between Recipients and Delivered will grow.
Unique Opens: This is the number of recipients that opened the email message and displayed any pictures. This statistic only works for recipients who have allowed images to be displayed or have added your FROM address to their contact list. It is best to look at this value as a trend across multiple mailings.
The open rate is determined by taking the number of unique email opens and dividing that by the number delivered.
Unique Clicks: Unique clicks are the number of the recipients that have clicked on at least one link in your email. The click rate is the number of unique clicks divided by the number of emails delivered.
Bounces: This is the unique number of emails that have "bounced back" and were not delivered. The bounce rate is the number of bounced emails divided by the total number of recipients. There are two types of bounces: "Permanent" and "Temporary". A Permanent bounce occurs when a domain or email box is not valid or has become invalid. A Temporary bounce occurs when an email is unable to reach the destination server or is blocked by a spam filter.
Undeliverable: These email addresses have bounced before due to a Permanent bounce and are now considered undeliverable. The system will no longer send email to an undeliverable address.
Sharers: This is the number of unique recipients who have shared a content item from your email. The number of sharers does not take into account the number of times they shared.
Followers: This number is calculated as people share content from your newsletter. This is the total size of the potential audience to which shared content has been published.
Unsubscribes: This is the number of recipients that no longer want to receive your emails. Once a recipient has unsubscribed, they are marked as opted-out and will no longer be sent email through the system.
Spam Reports - This is the number of spam reports generated by the message. Spam reports are not common, but when they do occur you must take them seriously. Consider the quality of your list and make sure you are using an opt-in mailing list.