There’s a lot that goes on when a newsletter is sent. Many activity tags and status updates are involved with audience engagement with the send. In this guide, we’ll review the main stats identifiers and explain each. You may see some of these on the Caboodle site, while others are more in the backend process, but it’s good to know them either way.
1. Processed – This is essentially what happens when you click ‘Send’ in the newsletter, which loads completely. This means that our email provider has received the newsletter and is ready to be delivered to the audience. This is a backend status that occurs in seconds.
2. Dropped – A drop occurs when you try to send a message to an email address listed on one of the suppression lists. If an email is already on one of the lists, our systems automatically drop the email to protect your Sender Reputation. You may see the following drop reasons: Invalid SMTP API header, Spam Content (if Spam Checker app is enabled), Unsubscribed Address, Bounced Address, Spam Reporting Address, Invalid, Recipient List over Package Quota
3. Delivered – This status shows the accepted response generated by the recipient’s mail server. This shows the message has been successfully delivered to the receiving server.
4. Deferred – The deferred status occurs when the receiving server of a member temporarily rejects the message because it was sent in too fast. We don’t usually have cases like this with Caboodle, so you have nothing to worry about.
5. Bounced – The Bounced status occurs when a receiving server cannot or would not permanently accept mail to this recipient. The message is dropped if a recipient has previously unsubscribed from your emails. Bounce is usually classified into hard and soft bounces.
A soft bounce means that the email address was valid, and the email message reached the recipient’s mail server. However, common reasons it bounced back include:
– The mailbox was full (the user is over their quota)
– The server was down.
– The message was too large for the recipient’s inbox.
A hard bounce occurs when the message has been permanently rejected either because:
– The email address is invalid.
– The email addresses don’t exist.
Hard-bounced addresses are added to a suppression list on our sending email provider side. This means that even if you send a message through a provider for that user, they will not even try to deliver to that address because it’s no longer good. Continuing to try to send to a known bad address will harm your reputation with the receiver, so they prevent that.
6. Blocked – This happens when an ISP or messaging organization has blocked the sender’s IP address. Blocks are less severe than bounces and do not result in permanent suppressions: subsequent sends to blocked email addresses are not automatically suppressed. It is also when the receiving server could not or would not accept the message temporarily. The message is dropped if a recipient has previously unsubscribed from your emails.
7. Opened – This is the response generated by a recipient opening an email or HTML message.
8. Clicked – This is the response generated by a recipient clicking on a link/article in the email or HTML message.
9. Spam Report – Recipient marked message as spam.
10. Unsubscribed – The recipient unsubscribed from the newsletter after getting this send. A user also gets unsubscribed if the continuous sends keep getting marked as spam.
