Emails sent through SMTP are easy to forget about. The order confirmation, the password reset and the quote from your practice software all leave in the background, and nobody checks whether they were delivered or read until a customer calls to ask where their invoice is. Mailpro records statistics for messages sent through its SMTP server, so you can see what is happening without waiting for complaints.
The figures Mailpro records
- Opening rate: the share of recipients who opened the email. Treat it as an indicator, not a precise count, because privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection can register opens automatically.
- Click rate: how many recipients clicked a link, and which links. For transactional email, clicks on “track my parcel” or “view invoice” show that the message did its job.
- Reactivity rate: clicks as a proportion of opens, a good gauge of whether the content is useful once read. It is also known as the click-to-open rate.
- Cancellation (unsubscribe) rate: how many people opted out from messages that carried an unsubscribe link.
- Geolocation: where opens come from, useful for exporters and tourism operators with customers overseas.
- Operating systems and devices: whether recipients read on phones or desktops, which should shape your templates.
Message-level details are available through SMTP message tracking, and the overall picture is on the SMTP server statistics dashboard.
Reading the numbers from New Zealand
Convert the clock. If your hour-by-hour chart looks odd, check whether it reflects NZST (UTC+12) or NZDT (UTC+13). Daylight saving starts on the last Sunday in September and ends on the first Sunday in April, and a one-hour shift can make a stable pattern look like a change in behaviour.
Split domestic and overseas. A Marlborough wine exporter or a Rotorua tour company may see many opens from Australia, Asia, Europe or North America. Look at New Zealand separately before drawing conclusions about your local customers.
Mind the seasons. Many businesses pause over Christmas and New Year, and transaction volumes swing with school holidays, the ski season or the summer tourist peak. Compare a month with the same month last year.
What to do with problems you spot
- Low opens on important emails: check your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records and the sender name. A confirmation from “noreply” is easier to ignore than one from your business name.
- Few clicks on invoices or tracking links: the key button may be too low or too small on mobile.
- Unsubscribes from transactional mail: a sign that marketing content has crept in. Under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, that can make the message commercial, with consent and unsubscribe duties. Keep receipts factual, and see New Zealand email marketing law.
- Many opens from unexpected countries: could be forwarding, security scanners or a real overseas audience worth a campaign of its own.
Statistics and privacy
Once tracking data is linked to named customers it is personal information under the Privacy Act 2020, so keep it only as long as it is useful and protect access to it. Mailpro stores it in Switzerland on private infrastructure, outside US jurisdiction. For a primer on the protocol behind all this, read what SMTP is.