How Jounce counts opens, clicks, and bounces

Every number on the results page comes from what the mail did after it left. Nothing is estimated. The same rules feed the list view’s columns on the Emails page, so a rate reads the same in both places.

Sent and delivered

Sent is the number of messages handed to the receiving mail servers. It is fixed the moment the send finishes, and it’s the count at the top of the results page, such as 1,206 people.

Delivered is sent minus bounces, shown as a share of sent. Delivered counts the mail a server accepted. Accepted is not the same as landing in the inbox. A mailbox can still file the email under spam.

Opens and clicks

An open counts once per person, no matter how often they open the email. A click counts once per person, on any link. Both rates count out of delivered mail, because a message that bounced was never there to open.

Some mail apps open an email on the reader’s behalf before the reader sees it, so opens run high.

Clicks are the number to trust when you compare two emails. That is also why an A/B test picks its winner by clicks. See The A/B test results. Whether a rate is good is a different question; see What a good open rate looks like.

Bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes

A bounce here is permanent: the mailbox is gone, or it refused the email for good. Jounce stops sending to that address on its own.

A spam complaint is a reader marking the email as spam in their mail app. An unsubscribe is a reader who opted out from this email. They used the link in your footer or their mail app’s own unsubscribe button.

The results page shows all three as counts, in a card under its main numbers. To judge whether bounces or spam complaints ran high, Jounce weighs each count against all the mail sent, which stays fixed. When one ran high, a note under the counts says so. A late bounce lowers Delivered and raises Bounced together.

These three arrive over time. Bounces and complaints can take a day or two to come back, so a fresh send’s counts can still rise.

When a number is a dash

A dash means there is no real number to show. It never means zero.

• No email was delivered. Every address bounced, so the list view has no delivered mail to take a share of.
• An older send. Open and click tracking started after some sends went out. Their Open rate and Click rate read Not tracked for this email.
• Still settling. While its counts are still settling, a rate can work out above 100%. The list view on the Emails page shows a dash rather than that rate, and the results page never shows a rate above 100%.

For the list view’s columns, see Why do my email’s numbers show a dash?.