List filter question--Users who clicked an email/users who opened an email | Community
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brianmcgann
New Participant
August 17, 2022
Question

List filter question--Users who clicked an email/users who opened an email

  • August 17, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3370 views

Yesterday, I deployed a campaign through Marketo. Today, I wanted to send an email to all of the users who clicked on a link in that email. In building the list, I selected anyone who opened yesterday's email, with my thinking being that in order to have clicked a link, they would have had to have opened the email. However, I'm wondering if I'm not necessarily getting the users who clicked a link. In building a list of users who clicked a link in yesterday's email but were not sent today's email, I get quite a few contacts. 

 

Does anyone have thoughts on this? Should there be a significant disparity in contacts who opened an email vs contacts who clicked an email? I realize they won't necessarily be one to one, but I wouldn't have expected to see a significant difference.

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2 replies

Katja_Keesom
Katja_Keesom
Community Manager
August 18, 2022

Totally agree with Sanford there. Not only are they technically completely different things, I am surprised you would assume that (almost) everyone receiving and opening your email would actually click on a link in there. That would be a marketer's dream. Of course there are some use cases for operational emails where you would expect high CTO rates, so it depends on what type of email you were sending.

Also do bear in mind that not all opens and clicks are made by humans. If your instance has bot activity tracking switched on, you may need to add some constraints to exclude mailscanner activities.

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brianmcgannAuthor
New Participant
August 18, 2022

I am surprised you would assume that (almost) everyone receiving and opening your email would actually click on a link in there. 

 

That's not what I was saying. My point was that in order to click the email, you would have had to first open the email. So everyone who clicked the email would have opened it first. However, I see that is not the case based on the previous reply.

Chris_Wilcox
Chris_Wilcox
New Participant
August 18, 2022

Hi @brianmcgann 

You're right in practice, but not in reporting. As Sanford said, the behavior of many email clients that people use (Outlook, iOS, etc.) sometimes either automatically download or automatically block the open pixel from firing, meaning you may get both false opens and non-reported opens.

 

All-in-all, opens is not a reliable reporting metric across any email marketing platform, just a symptom of technology. 

 

Truth be told, I'd be hesitant to even use the Clicked Link in Email filter, but that really depends on your audience. In my experience, I've seen some firms see a 10-15% click rate, to then review web activity from that email campaign and to see only maybe 15% of those "clicks" actually resulted in web page views. 

 

The most basic way to achieve a webpage based filter would be to layer on a "visited web page" filter with the landing page URL of your email, and "was delivered email" filter and constrain both to the day of and after the email send. that'll get you people who got the email, and Marketo saw on the website. Much more reliable. 
 

    SanfordWhiteman
    SanfordWhiteman
    New Participant
    August 17, 2022
    Opened Email means they downloaded the open tracking pixel.

    This is not going to happen by default in clients that have images turned off by default (Outlook). Conversely, it will happen for all users of platforms that automatically open every image regardless of user interaction (latest Mac OS and iOS).

    In sum, Opens Email is quite separate from Clicks Email.
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