Tracking & Analytics
Punchmail tracks how your subscribers interact with your emails — opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. This guide explains how tracking works, where to find your analytics, and how to configure tracking settings.
How Tracking Works
Open Tracking
When open tracking is enabled, Punchmail inserts a tiny, invisible image (called a tracking pixel) into every email it sends. When a subscriber opens the email and their email client loads images, the pixel is requested from your server, and Punchmail records the open.
Things to know about open tracking: - If a subscriber's email client blocks images by default (which many do), the open won't be recorded until they choose to load images. - Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) pre-loads images for Apple Mail users, which can inflate open numbers. Punchmail's “Human only” filter helps address this (more below). - Open tracking is a useful directional metric, but it's not 100% accurate. Treat it as a trend indicator, not a precise count.
Click Tracking
When click tracking is enabled, Punchmail rewrites the links in your emails to route through your tracking domain first. When a subscriber clicks a link, the click is recorded, and then they're instantly redirected to the original destination.
Things to know about click tracking: - Click tracking is more reliable than open tracking because it requires an actual user action. - Some security tools and email clients pre-scan links, which can generate false clicks. The “Human only” filter helps with this too. - Using a custom tracking domain (see below) makes tracked links look more professional and trustworthy.
Configuring Tracking Settings
Go to Settings > Tracking to manage your tracking configuration.
Open Tracking Toggle
A simple on/off switch. When enabled, every outgoing email gets a tracking pixel. When disabled, no open tracking occurs.
Recommendation: Keep this enabled. Open rates are one of the key metrics for understanding engagement and making decisions about list health.
Click Tracking Toggle
A simple on/off switch. When enabled, links in your emails are rewritten to pass through the tracking domain. When disabled, links go directly to their destination with no click recording.
Recommendation: Keep this enabled. Click rates are even more valuable than open rates — they show genuine interest.
Custom Tracking Domain
By default, tracking links and pixels use your platform URL (the one configured in Settings > General). But you can set up a custom tracking domain for a more polished look.
Why use a custom tracking domain?
- Tracked links look like https://track.yourcompany.com/... instead of https://mail.yourserver.com/....
- Subscribers are more likely to trust and click links that match your brand.
- Some spam filters look favorably on tracked links that match the sender's domain.
How to set it up:
- Go to Settings > Tracking.
- Enter your desired tracking domain (e.g.,
track.yourcompany.com). - In your DNS provider, add a CNAME record:
- Name:
track(or whatever subdomain you chose) - Target: Your platform URL (shown in the settings page)
- Save the tracking settings.
The settings page shows the exact CNAME record you need to create, so you can just copy it.
If you don't set a custom tracking domain, Punchmail falls back to your platform URL, which works fine — it just doesn't look as clean in tracked links.
Where to Find Your Analytics
Punchmail puts analytics in several places, depending on what you're looking at.
The Dashboard
Your main dashboard (the home page) gives you a bird's-eye view of your sending activity and engagement. You'll see aggregated stats across all your campaigns, including total sends, opens, clicks, and trends over time.
At the top of the dashboard, you'll notice a toggle between “Human only” and “All engagement”:
- Human only filters out bot traffic, security scanners, and Apple MPP prefetches. This gives you a more accurate picture of real human engagement.
- All engagement shows every recorded event, including automated/bot interactions.
Recommendation: Use “Human only” as your default view. Switch to “All engagement” only when you need to troubleshoot or see raw numbers.
Campaign Reports
After you send a campaign, its report page shows detailed metrics:
- Opens — How many recipients opened the email, shown as both a count and a percentage of delivered emails.
- Clicks — How many recipients clicked at least one link, shown as a count and percentage.
- Bounces — How many emails couldn't be delivered (split into hard bounces and soft bounces).
- Unsubscribes — How many recipients opted out after receiving this campaign.
The “Human only” vs. “All engagement” toggle is available on campaign reports too, so you can see filtered or unfiltered numbers.
Subscriber Profiles
Every subscriber has a profile page that shows their individual engagement history:
- Engagement stats — Total emails sent to them, total opens, total clicks, their open rate, their click rate, and when they last opened or clicked.
- Activity timeline — A chronological list of every event related to this subscriber:
- Sent events (gray) — When an email was delivered to them.
- Open events (green) — When they opened an email.
- Click events (blue) — When they clicked a link, including which URL.
- Bounce events (red) — When an email to them bounced.
This timeline is incredibly useful when you want to understand a specific subscriber's engagement pattern — are they active, dormant, or running into delivery issues?
UTM Parameters
If you use Google Analytics or another web analytics platform, you can add UTM parameters to the links in your email campaigns. These let you track what subscribers do after they click through to your website.
The main UTM parameters are:
| Parameter | Purpose | Example Value |
|---|---|---|
utm_source |
Where the traffic came from | punchmail |
utm_medium |
The marketing medium | email |
utm_campaign |
The specific campaign | spring-sale-2024 |
utm_content |
Which link in the email (optional) | hero-button |
You add these directly to the URLs in your email content. For example:
https://yoursite.com/sale?utm_source=punchmail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-sale
Punchmail's click tracking works alongside UTM parameters — it records the click, then redirects the subscriber to the full URL including UTMs.
Understanding Your Metrics
Here's a quick reference for healthy benchmark ranges:
| Metric | Good | Needs Attention | Concerning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Rate | 20%+ | 10-20% | Below 10% |
| Click Rate | 2%+ | 1-2% | Below 1% |
| Bounce Rate | Below 2% | 2-5% | Above 5% |
| Unsubscribe Rate | Below 0.5% | 0.5-1% | Above 1% |
| Complaint Rate | Below 0.1% | 0.1-0.3% | Above 0.3% |
These are general guidelines — your specific industry may differ. The important thing is to watch for trends. A gradually declining open rate is a signal to clean your list or refresh your content.
Tips for Better Engagement
- Write compelling subject lines. This is the single biggest factor in whether someone opens your email.
- Send at the right time. Experiment with different send times and watch your open rates.
- Segment your audience. Sending relevant content to targeted groups beats blasting the same message to everyone. See Segments.
- Keep your list clean. Remove inactive subscribers regularly. A smaller, engaged list performs far better than a large, dormant one.
- Use clear calls to action. If you want clicks, make it obvious what you want people to click and why.
- Check the “Human only” view. Don't make decisions based on inflated bot numbers. Use the filtered view for realistic engagement data.
What to Read Next
- Sending Domains & Deliverability — Set up your domain authentication and monitor your sender reputation.
- Suppression Lists — Prevent emails from going to addresses that should never be contacted.
- Settings — Configure all of Punchmail's platform settings.