What information is in the Executive Summary mailing report? – Ascendant

Each time you send out an e-newsletter, you are provided a detailed report of delivery and interactions with the mailing in the Executive Summary.
NOTE: Please allow 2 hours after sending a mailing for the statistics to start compiling.

Log into the Gateway eNewsletter.

Select Mailings from the Top Navigation Menu.
Select Sent Mailings from the Left Navigation Panel. Click the name of the mailing to see the Executive Summary for that mailing.

Using the Executive Summary Results

There are endless uses for the data you can access through the Executive Summary. You can create Criteria Based Lists using many of the mailing interactions so you can send targeted mailings. You can gain insight into your readers’ opinions through the survey results. You can see who your major influencers are by checking the social networking share information to see who’s generating the most views. You can also see which locations you should target more heavily based on the map reports. If you’re interested in learning more about using the data from your reports, talk to your Ascendant Representative.

Mailing Information

The Mailing Information displays in the first section box. From here, you can view the sent email, print a summary of your report, see associated lists, and select a different report to view. Executive Summary is the default report for each mailing.

Snapshot Boxes

Next to the Mailing Information, you will see several Snapshot Boxes that call your attention to key statistics within your report such as subscribers and views. Clicking on the header will show you more details about that statistic.

Social Network Sharing and Survey Results

If you included social network sharing or a survey in your newsletter, you will see additional Section Boxes displaying the social Network results or your survey questions and responses. This report will break down each social network or survey question and response and display a count of contacts. If you click on the response itself, it will list each contact and his/her email.

What did they click?

The “What did they click?” Section Box displays all of the links that were included in your newsletter. To view details or mapping reports of each link that contacts clicked, click the URL.

Activity Details

There are quite a few interaction statistics within the Activity Details. Most are links that will allow you to view more details about the contacts who registered that particular activity. A complete list of explanations for each activity is below:

Sent—This is the total number of contacts the mailing has been sent to. If the percentage in the “Rate” column is not 100%, the mailing is still actively going out.
Delivered—This is the number of email messages that were successfully delivered to recipient mail servers. This number is determined by subtracting Bounce Soft, Bounce Hard, and Bounce Unknown counts from the total number of Sent messages.
NOTE: It is common to see less that 100% delivered due to Bounce Backs, which are explained later in this list.
Unique Views—This indicates the number of recipients that have interacted with the mailing in any way. Clicking on a link, downloading images, or viewing the HTML version will count as a view.
Opted In—This counts anyone that interacted with an item in the mailing that would subscribe them to your mailings, whether or not they are already subscribers. For instance, if a current subscriber updated his or her profile, it would count as an opt in since updating the profile automatically subscribes viewers.
Mailing Specific Opted In—This counts anyone who was NOT a subscriber before this mailing who interacted with an item in the mailing that would make them a subscriber. These are new subscribers because of their interaction with this mailing.
Reply—This counts anyone who replied to your mailing. You can view details about those who replied, along with their messages by clicking on the Reply hyperlink.
Click Throughs—A click through registers whenever a constituent clicks any link within the newsletter. (A more detailed breakdown of each link displays in the “Click Through Results” at the bottom of the Executive Summary.)
Survey Responses—This counts the number of contacts who responded to your survey. (A more detailed breakdown of the survey results will be listed at the bottom of the Executive Summary if you included a survey in the mailing.)
Profile Change—This registers any change to the contact’s profile via the “Update My Profile” link that usually displays at the bottom of the mailing.
Added to System— This counts any new contacts added to the system via items within the mailing. For example, if an email address was added via "Tell a Friend", this is a new contact added to the system.
Forward—This lists anyone who sent an email to a new constituent through “Tell a Friend.” (NOTE: If you do not include the "Tell a Friend" widget in your mailing, you will not be able to track forwards or forward recipients in your reports.)
Forward Recipient—This lists the email of the recipients who were forwarded the email via “Tell a Friend.”
Social Networking Share—This lists any contacts who shared the mailer on a social networking site. (NOTE: If you do not include the Social Share links from the Stock Content in your mailing, you will not be able to track social networking shares or views in your reports.)
Social Networking View—This counts the number of views the sharers generated for your mailing by sharing the mailer on a particular social networking site.
Bounce Soft—A bounce is a mailing that “bounced back” and was not received by the contact. The soft bounce means that the ISP still registers an email address for this contact, but for whatever reason—a full mailbox, too many emails to one domain at a time, etc.—the mailing did not get to the recipient’s mailbox. This is a temporary issue, so the soft bounce will not remove people from the contact list, but it is an important statistic do check. Too many soft bounces could indicate that you are being blocked by a particular ISP. If that is the case, then you should consider removing these email address temporarily from your mailing lists.
Bounce Hard—This means that the ISP notified us that these contacts are invalid email addresses. The email is permanently marked as no longer being an active account or a known spam account. These contacts are removed from the current contact list and added to the Hard Bounce list. The Hard Bounce list will be suppressed from all mailings.
Bounce Unknown—The system is unable to determine soft or hard bounce. These contacts are not removed from your contact list.

NOTE: Additional reports can be found in Analytics. See the article Monitoring Your Mailing Results for more information.