Confusing reporting for “Opens by email client” in email performance

[vanessa2]

Requesting more clarity on an aspect of email performance reporting: Opens by email client.

My goal is to understand what percentage of our opens happen on a mobile device.

Two questions:

1. Gmail is coded purple indicating it’s neither a Desktop nor Mobile client. (Same for “Microsoft Office.”) I assume from this that HubSpot can’t distinguish between Gmail viewed on a desktop browser and Gmail viewed in the Gmail mobile app. Is that accurate?
2. Android webview and Chrome are browsers, not email clients. Fortunately, this helps me with my mobile vs desktop question, but also it makes me curious. Why does HubSpot label these opens this way instead of identifying the email client? What email client are our recipients likely using?

Below is a screenshot of this report from one of our emails. Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[JessicaH]

Hi @vanessa2,

Thanks for reaching out.
I want to tag in some subject matter experts to see if they have any suggestions.
Hi @dianalcont @matthodkinson @Kim_HM , do you have any thoughts on this?

Thanks!
Jess  

[dianalcont · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the mention @JessicaH 

Hi @vanessa2 - I don't have concrete answers for these questions, but I have some good guesses.

1. I am willing to bet that figure is the stat from the app specifically. Why? Gmail is webmail - which means that you typically access it via web browser instead of on desktop or app. Notice that we see Apple Mail (ios) is listed at the top which means folks could be checking multiple email client inboxes from their connected mail on iPhone.
   
   A reason for the "other" categorizaton could be that folks are accessing your email via tablet or smart watch. Since 2015 email marketing consumption has been changed with the introduction of the smart watch. So maybe something to consider when building out your emails.
   
   
   
2. As for the web browser versus email client question - I see where this part of the report can be confusing, but considering my note about webmail above I have a couple thoughts here:

• Your audience could be accessing their gmail, yahoo mail, office 365 mail, etc. via those specific web browsers
• This is important to take note of because each web browser will unpackage and translate code differently. There is not really a standarization accross web browsers. Which you must consider if you have fonts or styling that is being applied to your email or web page templates.

I hope this helps unpack the value of that report a little better. My main focus when looking at those stats is to see how people consume my content. Outlook is particularly challenging to get stylized emails to render properly, but more importantly if I am linking to a landing page in my emails do I need to:

• focus on designing first for mobile conversions?
• make sure my font kit includes font files that are friendly to certain web browsers?
• design for an outdated web browser in general so that my content doesn't break in the space that my audience consumes their content?

Let me know if you'd like to unpack this further!

Diana