Insights and Analytics14% of the exam
Email metric formulas and engagement dashboards
The standard email metric formulas and their denominators (sent, delivered or unique opens), what bounces, unsubscribes and complaints mean, why open tracking is unreliable and clicks are the safer signal, and how to read the Intelligence Reports Email Overview and Email Engagement dashboards.
Given a customer scenario, explain the different metrics available for email campaigns and what each one means.
~7 min read · 12 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Calculate the standard email rates and pick the right denominator: emails sent, emails delivered or unique opens.
- Explain what each metric says about an email (subject line, content, list health) and pick the metric that answers a stakeholder's question.
- Tell hard bounces from soft and block bounces, and bounces from unsubscribes and complaints.
- Explain why open counts can be missing or inflated and why click metrics are the safer engagement signal.
- Read the Intelligence Reports Email Overview and Email Engagement dashboards, including unique KPIs and the Engagement Distribution chart.
- Key terms: unique open (only the first open from each recipient); click-to-open rate (CTOR) (unique clicks divided by unique opens); hard bounce (permanent delivery failure); soft or block bounce (temporary delivery failure); complaint (a spam complaint identified by an ISP); Intelligence Reports (the Engagement dashboards feature, not the Marketing Cloud Intelligence product).
Key facts
Bounce rate base
- Detail
- Sent emails, not delivered
Delivered-based rates
- Detail
- Unique open, unique click, CTR, unsubscribe, complaint
CTOR
- Detail
- Unique clicks ÷ unique opens x 100
List growth rate
- Detail
- (New minus unsubscribes) ÷ total addresses x 100
Healthy unsubscribe rate
- Detail
- Less than 2%
Complaint rate target
- Detail
- Less than 0.1%
Open tracking
- Detail
- Transparent pixel; not detected if images aren't downloaded
Apple Mail Privacy Protection
- Detail
- Marks nearly all Apple Mail emails opened; CTR unaffected
Email Engagement KPIs
- Detail
- Opens, clicks, unsubscribes are uniques
Engagement Distribution
- Detail
- Top 10 emails; x open rate, y CTOR, bubble = sends
- Why can a unique click rate be low on a successful email?
- When is all-click CTR more useful than unique click rate?
- Which editions include the Email Overview dashboard?
- What does the Email Overview dashboard rank its top and bottom five journeys by?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 31 lessons of the Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist guide, with reading progress
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