Read email analytics
DonorCARE measures opens and clicks against how much mail actually reached an inbox, not how much you sent — so a bounce doesn’t quietly drag down your open rate.
Why it works this way
Section titled “Why it works this way”Mail that bounces was never opened by anyone. If opens were measured as a share of everything sent, a campaign with a lot of bad addresses would look like it was read by fewer people than it really was — the bounces, not the reading, would be moving the number. Measuring against what was actually delivered keeps the rate about the mail that had a chance to be read.
The terms
Section titled “The terms”Sent — every email DonorCARE attempted for the campaign.
Delivered — the share of Sent that reached an inbox rather than bouncing.
Opened — measured against Delivered, not Sent, because mail that bounced was never open-able.
Clicked — also measured against Delivered. It counts each donor once, even if they click more than once.
Bounced — measured against Sent, since a bounce is about mail that couldn’t be delivered at all.
Suppression list — the addresses DonorCARE never sends a marketing campaign to again automatically, because they’ve bounced, complained, or unsubscribed. You can add an address by hand too, and remove one if you’re sure it’s valid and the donor still wants your mail. It only affects marketing campaigns — receipts and other automatic mail are unaffected.
What this means in practice
Section titled “What this means in practice”Do
- Read “opened” and “clicked” as a share of mail that actually reached an inbox.
Don’t
- Compare your open rate here against a rate you’ve seen quoted elsewhere measured against everything sent — the same-looking percentage can describe two different things.
If you send campaigns using your own SendGrid account instead of DonorCARE’s default, this page can’t show opens, clicks or bounces for them — they show as zero here regardless of how the mail actually performed, because those figures depend on engagement events reaching DonorCARE through its own sending path.
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”A campaign sent to 500 donors (invented figures): 480 delivered, 20 bounced. Of the 480 delivered, 240 were opened and 48 were clicked.
- Delivered: 480 of 500 sent = 96%
- Opened: 240 of 480 delivered = 50%
- Clicked: 48 of 480 delivered = 10%
- Bounced: 20 of 500 sent = 4%
Related
Section titled “Related”Screenshots use sample data. Every screen on this page is captured against a demo organisation seeded with generated donors, amounts, receipt numbers and campaigns. Any resemblance to a real person or organisation is coincidental.