Counting unique email openers during a specific time period

[nick-la-vic]

Every marketing pro out there is struggling to figure out how email needs to adapt to the covid world. One important metric we are trying to understand is the number of unique openers of email we can identify during specific time periods.

In other words, for instance, during Q1 of 2021, how many unique email addresses opened a marketing email (any email, or filtered by campaign, etc).

Surprisingly, there is no tool or feature in HubSpot that allows for this. Why not, and how can we get one?

[andrus]

Hmm.. could you not define a List of people that have clicked more than X emails, and the last email click occurred in a specific period? Adding a List definition with contact properties. 

 

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @andrus,

No, HubSpot is counting unique marketing emails here, not the number of opens. Also, the opens could've happened outside of the specified range, as long as one open has happened within.

Best regards!

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @nick-la-vic,

Out of the box that's not possible at this stage, unfortunately. In general, keep in mind that especially the number of email opens for a particular contact is not very reliable. Some email clients open emails in the background to check them for fraud – this is sometimes also registered as an open. Whether a contact has opened an email just once or multiple times doesn't tell you much.

There are some users who have tried to make this work with workflows and custom number properties that count up +1 when an email is clicked in a certain time frame (only once per email). This would give you a subset of the data captured by the contact property Marketing emails clicked. I know it's tempting to want the exact data, but for newsletters subscribers, the Marketing emails clicked property might just be good enough an approximation.

Another way of measuring engagement of blog subscribers is the Number of page views. Again, this is the overall number of page views, but might be a good enough approximation.

Best regards!

[nick-la-vic]

Thanks Karsten - all I am looking for is simply to use the "Marketing Emails Clicked >/= 1", but to confine that to a specific timep period - and I just don't see how to confine the time period - it really would be a smart/no-brainer feature for sure.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @nick-la-vic,

Fully agree, unfortunately not possible at this stage.

Best regards!