# How to read your email campaign report > A plain-language walkthrough of the campaign report screen — the four headline metrics, how open and click rates are really calculated, and how to drill down to individual recipients. - Canonical URL: https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/how-to-read-your-email-campaign-report - Author: Ryan Walsh, Audience & Analytics Editor - Category: Analytics & Reporting — Open rates, click maps, campaign performance, device reports, exports - Content type: tutorial · Difficulty: beginner - Tags: Performance, Open Rates, Click Rates, Analytics - Published: 2026-06-21 · Last updated: 2026-08-15 - Reading time: 7 min - Publisher: AcelleMail Knowledge Base, https://acellesend.com/kb --- Sending a campaign is only half the job — the report is where you find out what actually happened: how many people received it, opened it, clicked it, and where to aim your next send. This guide walks the campaign report screen from top to bottom so every number makes sense and you know which ones to act on. It's written for anyone who has sent at least one campaign; no analytics background needed. By the end you'll be able to open any campaign's report, read its headline numbers correctly, judge whether they're healthy, and drill down to the individual people who engaged. ## Before you start - **A campaign you've already sent.** The report only fills in once a campaign has gone out. If you haven't sent one yet, follow [create and send your first email campaign](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/create-your-first-email-campaign) first. - **Open and click tracking left on.** These are on by default, and the report's open and click numbers depend on them. Once the report is open you can confirm it in the **Campaign details** panel, where *Tracking* reads "Opens, Clicks". - **A little patience for opens.** Opens and clicks keep arriving for hours — sometimes days — after a send, so a report checked five minutes after sending will look quieter than the same report tomorrow. > **Why the report matters:** the numbers tell you what to change next. A weak open rate points at your subject line and sender reputation; a healthy open rate but few clicks points at the email's content and calls-to-action. Reading the report is how one campaign makes the next one better. ## Step 1 — Open the report From the left menu, open **Email** under *Campaigns*, then click the name of a campaign you've already sent. It opens straight onto the **Overview** tab — the summary report. Along the top is a row of tabs: **Overview**, **Insights**, **Links**, **Map**, **Sending logs**, and **Email review**. Overview is where you'll spend most of your time; the others drill into specific angles. At the top of Overview you'll often see a plain-language **insight banner** — for this campaign it reads *"Strong engagement — your open rate of 48% is above average — 1,893 recipients engaged with your campaign."* It's an automatic, one-line read of the headline numbers: a quick gut-check before you dig into the detail. ![The campaign report open on the Overview tab](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/how-to-read-your-email-campaign-report/step-1.png) *Click a sent campaign to land on its Overview report; the tab row lets you drill into links, locations, and recipients.* Just under the title you'll see when the campaign was sent and a **Last updated** time with a refresh icon — more on that in Troubleshooting. ## Step 2 — Read the four headline numbers The four cards near the top summarize the whole send. Read them left to right: 1. **Recipients** — the size of the audience the campaign was sent to (here, 7,914). 2. **Delivered** — how many messages the receiving mail servers accepted, with the delivery rate beneath (3,935, 49.72%). Your open and click rates are measured against *this* number, not Recipients. A healthy campaign delivers **95% or more**, so a figure this low is worth investigating (see Troubleshooting). 3. **Opened** — how many *unique* people opened the email, with the open rate (1,893, 48.11%). 4. **Clicked** — how many unique people clicked a tracked link, with the click rate (154, 3.91%). ![The four headline metric cards: Recipients, Delivered, Opened, and Clicked](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/how-to-read-your-email-campaign-report/step-2.png) *Recipients → Delivered → Opened → Clicked, each with its rate underneath.* > **Is that good?** Rough benchmarks for most lists: **delivery 95%+**, **open rate 20–40%** (higher right after someone subscribes), and **click rate 2–5%**. They vary a lot by industry, so your own trend over time matters more than any single number — but they tell you at a glance that 48% opens here is strong while 3.91% clicks is about average. Picture the four as a shrinking staircase: of everyone the campaign went to, some were delivered; of those, some opened, and some clicked. (A **bounce** — a message the receiving server refused — is one that never reaches Delivered.) ## Step 3 — Understand how the rates are calculated Scroll down to the **Open rate** and **Click rate** panels. This is where most people misread a report, so it's worth a moment. Both rates share the **same base: Delivered.** - **Open rate** = unique opens ÷ delivered = 1,893 ÷ 3,935 = **48.11%** (not 1,893 ÷ 7,914). The panel spells it out with **Successful deliveries**, **Unique opens**, and **Not opened**. - **Click rate** = unique clicks ÷ delivered = 154 ÷ 3,935 = **3.91%** — the same denominator as opens, so the two are directly comparable. ![The Open rate and Click rate panels showing successful deliveries, unique opens, and totals](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/how-to-read-your-email-campaign-report/step-3.png) *Both rates divide by Delivered. "Unique" counts people, so one subscriber opening six times still counts once.* "Unique" is the key word. The Click rate panel shows both **Total clicks** (every click — one person clicking twice counts twice) and **Unique clicks** (people). They happen to be equal here (154 and 154), but the moment someone clicks a link more than once, Total climbs above Unique. Use unique clicks to judge how many humans engaged, and total clicks to see raw link activity. The **Abuse reports** figure on the same panel counts recipients who marked the email as spam — you want it at or near zero. ## Step 4 — Drill down to individual recipients Summary rates tell you *how many*; sometimes you need *who*. Two places drill in: - **Open log** and **Click log** — the buttons on the Open rate and Click rate panels — list the exact people who opened or clicked. This is your "who engaged" view. - **Sending logs → Delivery log** — every recipient with a **Status** (it reads **Sent** once the message has left for the receiving server) and a date, searchable by email. This is your "who received it" view — handy when someone says they never got the email. ![The per-recipient delivery log listing each recipient, status, and date](https://acellesend.com/plugins/acelle/landing/images/kb-bot/how-to-read-your-email-campaign-report/step-4.png) *The delivery log lists every recipient, their status, and when the message was handled — search by email to check one contact.* Lower down on Overview, **Top links clicked** shows which URLs earned the clicks, and **Top open countries** and **Most active subscribers** show where and who your engagement came from — useful for planning [a re-engagement campaign for the people who didn't open](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/re-engagement-campaigns-win-back-inactive-subscribers). The **Rate summary** panel also lists your **Unsubscribed** and spam-complaint figures; keep both at or near zero — a spike there means your content or frequency is pushing people away. > **Tip:** To attribute clicks to specific buttons or track them in your website analytics, add UTM tags to your links — see [setting up UTM parameters for campaign tracking](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/setting-up-utm-parameters-for-email-campaign-tracking). ## Troubleshooting **My open rate looks strangely high or jumps around.** Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads tracking pixels, which registers an "open" even when nobody read the email. Treat open rate as a directional signal; clicks are far more reliable, though automated security scanners can still inflate them a little. There's a fuller explanation in [email open rates in the age of Apple MPP](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/understanding-email-open-rates-in-the-age-of-apple-mpp). **The numbers look stale or lower than I expected.** The report is cached for speed. Use the refresh icon next to **Last updated** to recompute the latest figures, and remember opens and clicks keep trickling in for a day or two after a send — check back tomorrow before drawing conclusions. **Delivered is much lower than Recipients.** A small gap is normal — a few addresses **bounce** (the receiving server refuses them) or are skipped as invalid at send time. A *large* gap, like the ~50% in this example, is a red flag. Open the **Statistics breakdown** panel, which itemizes **Failed**, **Bounced**, and **Reported as spam**, to see where the messages went. If the campaign still shows as sending, give it time and refresh; if it shows as finished, a delivery rate that low usually points to list quality or sender-reputation problems worth chasing down — start with [cleaning your list](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/email-list-hygiene-clean-your-list-for-better-deliverability). ## Recap You can now open a campaign's report, read the Recipients → Delivered → Opened → Clicked funnel, calculate open and click rates against the right base (Delivered), judge them against rough benchmarks, and drill down to individual recipients and links. For the concepts behind the numbers — deeper benchmarks and what counts as "good" — read [understanding email analytics and key metrics](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/understanding-email-analytics-and-key-metrics). When you're ready to act on what you found, [analyze your click map to optimize the layout](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/click-map-analysis-optimize-your-email-layout). --- ## Related articles - [Open Rates + Apple MPP: What AcelleMail's Numbers Actually Mean](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/understanding-email-open-rates-in-the-age-of-apple-mpp): Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates 30-45% of your "opens" by pre-fetching pixels. This guide shows how to spot MPP inflation in AcelleMail (open-log IPs), what to measure instead, and how to adjust your A/B tests + reporting. - [Email Campaign ROI: Math + AcelleMail Data Points](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/email-roi-calculation-measuring-campaign-profitability): Email ROI = (Revenue − Cost) / Cost. This guide shows the math, which AcelleMail data points feed each variable, the costs people forget to count, and a working revenue-attribution pattern using UTMs + your store. - [UTM Parameters in AcelleMail — Tracking Clicks to Your Analytics Tool](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/setting-up-utm-parameters-for-email-campaign-tracking): Configure UTM tags once in your campaign settings — AcelleMail appends them to every link in the email automatically. This guide walks the campaign-level + global UTM settings, the post-send click report, and how the UTMs land in Google Analytics or Plausible. - [Read the Campaign Report: AcelleMail Analytics Tour](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/understanding-email-analytics-and-key-metrics): AcelleMail's campaign report has 6 tabs (Overview / Insights / Links / Map / Sending logs / Email review) and 5 headline metrics. This walkthrough shows where each metric lives, what 'good' looks like, and what to do when a number's bad. - [A/B Report Deep Dive: Reading AcelleMail Test Results](https://acellesend.com/kb/articles/comparative-campaign-analysis-ab-test-results-deep-dive): After your A/B test finishes, the A/B Report tab tells you the winner — but the real value is in the variant-level numbers. This guide walks through the report, the statistical-significance rules, and what to do for winner / inconclusive / loss verdicts.