When you send emails – whether manually or automatically – you might want to know how many people opened the message, and how many clicked on each link within the message. If you enable email tracking, you can go the email log and view the total number of opens and clicks, and see which recipients opened the message and clicked which links. You can then export the tracking information to a spreadsheet for further analysis.
To view the email log, hover over the Email menu then click the Log option. To view the activity for a particular email, click the email within the log.
Emails are tracked for a period of three months from the date the email is sent. Any activity that takes place after that time won't be reflected in the email log.
Enabling email tracking
To track emails, you must enable email tracking before the email is sent. Enabling email tracking will not allow you to track email messages already sent.
Email tracking is enabled separately for manual emails and automatic system emails (e.g. event announcements).
To enable email tracking for manual emails, check the Enable link and open email tracking check box on the Recipients tab of the email wizard before sending the message.
To enable email tracking in automatic system emails, hover over the Dashboard menu and select the Organization option. On the right side of the screen, check the Tracking check box.
Once you've enabled email tracking, a Links tracking tab will become available for the message within the email log, and the email summary will include:
- the number and percentage of messages that failed to be delivered
- the number and percentage of messages opened
- the number of clicks and the percentage of recipients who clicked one or more links
Tracking opens
With email tracking enabled, the total number of opened messages – and the percentage of messages that were opened – appears within the summary at the top.
In the above example, 2 out of 19 emails – 11% – were opened.
On the Delivered tab, a message will be considered Opened if the recipient opened the message at least once using either their primary or secondary email address.
To determine whether an email message is opened, Wild Apricot uses a system called clear pixel tracking – in which a small transparent image is inserted into the email message. When the email is opened and the image is displayed, our servers are alerted and the message is marked as opened.
If the image is displayed within a message preview pane, the message will be counted as having been opened.
The image uses a unique code for each recipient so if the message is forwarded, any activity will be recorded for the original recipient.
Our method of tracking opens is not 100% accurate. Email programs that block messages from displaying images or take special privacy measures against tracking may prevent our servers from determining whether the message has been opened or not.
Tracking links
With email tracking enabled, the email summary displays the total number of links clicked, along with the percentage of messages in which at least one link was clicked. You can therefore have more links clicked than messages opened.
In the above example, in 2 out of 19 emails – 11% – at least one link was clicked. Within those 2 emails, 5 links were clicked in total.
Not included in email tracking is the clicking of the buttons displayed by the {Registration buttons} macro. To view click totals for the different buttons, filter the Registrants & invitees screen by the appropriate response.
To view the number of clicks for individual links within your email message, click the Links tracking tab. For each link – including the Unsubscribe link – the total number of clicks is displayed.
To view which links each recipient clicked, click the Delivered tab. For each recipient, the destinations of all clicked links are listed.
To determine when a link is clicked, Wild Apricot redirects each link to another address – where the clicks are counted – before sending it onto the actual link address. This process should be invisible to your recipients.
Sending followup emails based on email tracking
If you want to send a followup email to recipients who didn't open your message or didn't click any of its links, follow these steps:
- Make sure that email tracking is turned on for your manual email.
- After sending your email, go to the email log, open your message and click the Delivered tab.
- From the Delivered tab, click the Filter drop down and select either Not opened or Open but not clicked, depending on who you want to send the followup to.
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Click the Send again to selected button.
- Modify your email as you wish then send the message.
Exporting tracking information
You can export the tracking information for a particular message to a spreadsheet for further analysis. The spreadsheet will contain contact and membership information for each recipient, along with the following columns:
- Delivered?
Possible values: Delivered, Failed - Opened?
Possible values: Yes, No, empty (if delivery failed) -
Clicked?
Possible values: Yes, No, empty (if email was not opened) -
Links (one column for each trackable link)
Possible values: Clicked, empty (if not clicked) - Failed response
The text of the email failure message
To export the tracking information for a message, click the Export button at the top of the screen while viewing the message details.
On the dialog that appears, select the export file format (XLS, CSV, or XML), choose the fields to include in the export file then click the Export button.
While the export file is being generated, you can click the Continue working button and safely switch to another Wild Apricot admin screen, or wait for the file to be generated. If you wait until the export file is generated, the file will be automatically downloaded, and a link to the file will appear as well. In either case, you'll receive an email with a link to the file.
