Help · Bot Wars

Opens and clicks by people, not machines

“What is real? How do you define real?”

Not every open or click on your email is a person. Some are made by machines before anybody reads a word, and counting them as people makes your email look read when it was not, and your segments full of people who never looked.

The short answer

Carpe Messaging recognizes Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens and security-scanner clicks automatically, on every store, with nothing to set up, and counts people only. Every open and click is still kept, and the reports show the total with the automatic ones in it beside the people number.

There is no setting for this and nothing to enable. It works the same way on every store, from the first email you send.

Two kinds of automatic open and click

Apple Mail opens email by itself to protect the reader’s privacy, and email security systems open email and follow its links before anyone reads it. The app marks each one as it happens, from what reached us alone, and never counts either as a person.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection. When a reader has it on, Apple Mail loads every email’s images through Apple’s own servers as the email arrives, whether or not anyone ever opens it. Each of those loads would read as an open. The app recognizes them and calls them Automatic · Apple Mail privacy.

Email security systems and link previews. Many companies, schools and mailbox providers check every incoming email before the reader sees it: they open it, and follow every link in it to make sure the links are safe. Link previews do the same. The app recognizes them and calls them Automatic · security scanner. Three things mark one:

• the request comes from a program, not from a mail app or a browser;
• it only checks the link, without ever loading the page it points to;
• the click comes within a minute of the email leaving, sooner than a person can open an email and press something in it.

Every event is kept. An automatic open or click is marked, never deleted, and it stays in the total on every screen. Nothing you can see disappears.

Where you see the two numbers

Opened and Clicked always count people, and the total with the automatic opens and clicks in it sits beside them as “in all”. The “in all” line appears only when it differs from the people number, so a report with no automatic opens reads exactly as it always did. Where they change a rate, the rate with them in it shows beside it.

You see both numbers in these places:

• A campaign’s report. The Opened and Clicked tiles count people, with “in all” under them. The first 48 hours chart, Clicks by link and Where people clicked count people only.
• An automation’s report. Each email step’s Opened and Clicked count people, with “in all” under them. The i beside Opened says what the difference is.
• Home. Opened and Clicked count people, and so do their rates, with “in all” beside them.
• Analytics → Messages and Analytics → Performance. The open and click rates count people, with the rate in all beside them where the two differ.
• Analytics → Deliverability. Each inbox’s open rate counts people, with the “in all” rate under it.
• Analytics → Metrics. The Opened Email and Clicked Email charts count people, and the total carries “in all”. In the activity under the chart, each automatic open or click is listed and marked.
• A profile. Opens and Clicks count people, with “in all” under them, and in the profile’s activity each automatic open or click is listed and marked.

The numbers on your campaigns screen count people.

The campaign report and an automation’s report say it in one sentence beside the numbers:

Opened and Clicked count people. Apple Mail opens every email by itself to protect the reader’s privacy, and some email security systems open emails and follow their links before anyone reads them. Those automatic opens and clicks are never counted as people; when there are any, they are in “in all”. An Apple Mail open never makes anyone look inactive.

An order needs a person’s click. Orders after a click counts an order only when a person clicked first. A security system following every link in your email never earns a campaign an order.

How segments use them

A segment rule about opening or clicking an email counts people. An automatic open from Apple Mail never makes anybody look like they stopped reading, and a rule can find those readers on purpose. A security scanner’s open or click never counts in a segment.

• Opened an email and clicked a link in an email count what people did, in every form: at least once, and counted, such as at least 3 times. The segment’s own sentence says not counting automatic opens.
• Never opened, fewer than, at most, and any count that lets in zero still count people, but a reader whose only opens are Apple Mail automatic ones is never picked out as not opening: nobody can tell whether they read your email. The sentence says someone whose only opens are Apple Mail’s automatic ones is never picked out as not opening. Excluding anyone who opened an email works the same way: those readers are excluded along with the people who opened, never kept in as somebody who did not open. A rule on the Opened Email event works the same way too.
• Was mailed and didn't open or click any email treats an Apple Mail automatic open as an open. A loyal Apple Mail reader who never clicks is not called quiet, so they are never put in the built-in Lapsed 365d segment for it.
• Send it again to people who did not engage excludes anyone whose Apple Mail opened the email, so an Apple Mail reader never gets the same campaign twice.
• Your warm-up sends to the people who engaged first. An Apple Mail automatic open keeps somebody at the front, the same as an open.
• Had an automatic open from Apple Mail finds those readers on purpose: anyone whose Apple Mail opened one of your emails in the last so many days. It is under Email activity when you add a condition, and the Building a segment page describes it.

The built-in Engaged 90d and Engaged 180d segments count people. Somebody who has not ordered or clicked, and whose only opens are Apple Mail automatic opens, is in neither those nor Lapsed 365d, because nobody can tell whether they read your email.

Last activity on your profiles moves for a person’s open or click, and for an Apple Mail automatic open too, so an Apple Mail reader never looks inactive on the profiles screen. A security scanner’s open or click on an email you sent from here never moves it.

What nobody can see

A real read behind Apple Mail Privacy Protection cannot be seen by any sender. Apple loads the email’s images once, as it arrives, and when the reader opens it later, that open reaches nobody. This is true for every email platform, and it is the reason an Apple Mail automatic open is never held against anyone.

So your people number counts what we can see people did. An Apple Mail reader who reads every email and never clicks is somebody we cannot tell apart from somebody who never opened it, and the app treats them as exactly that: not engaged, and not lapsed either.

Imported history follows the same rules

Opens and clicks you imported from the tool you are coming from are judged the same way, from the marks that tool recorded with each one. An imported Apple Mail privacy open and an imported click a security system made stay in your history, and never count as a person in your segments. An imported automatic click never confirms an address that arrived held, either.

An imported segment about opening or clicking any email counts people too, and counts the opens and clicks from the email you send here as well. One about a particular email, or about a fixed date, counts your imported history only, not the email you send from here, and counts people there the same way.