Transparent Reporting
(without the tricky fine print)
“Should I trust them with my marketing dollars?” is a good question to ask yourself whenever some email service refuses to itemize your verified email opens.
- Every single reputable service that sends mass emails tracks email opens. (It's a number we all have.)
- Unfortunately a few refuse to itemize your email opens.
Whenever you pay for an email blast, you deserve a report that itemizes your verified email opens.
Period.
“ I just spoke to ZipYourFlyer and when I asked them if they can provide me with more detailed delivery info, I was told "this is the best they can provide"— 2022 email from a ZipYourFlyer customer who noticed no itemized email in his report
So don't be fooled by any vendor's so-called "delivery report" that fails to itemize how many times your actual email was opened.
(One trick to watch out for is lumping all the web, app, and email views together into a single number rather than itemizing each view source.)
Why would anyone do that? In our opinion such reporting is likely hiding poor email open rates. Perhaps as a result of years of poor email practices, such as blasting a listing to agents thousands of miles away?
Case study #1: ZipYourFlyer Reporting
ZipYourFlyer describes their service as the “industry leader” and they tout their email delivery, which in our opinion makes their refusal to itemize email opens pretty “sketchy”. They have disclaimers and/or fine print which obfuscate their reports not itemizing actual verified email open rates two ways…
1) They do not report how many email were opened:
May 2024 ZipYourFlyers report wording (color added for emphasis):
"This data also contains views of your E-Flyer from the Zip Your Flyer App."
That disclaimer "also contains" tells you they've mixed in some (undefined) "app" views with your actual email views. They do not itemize your email opens.
Bottom line: if they had good email results they would separately itemize EACH number (mail opens and other opens), in our opinion. Like we do.
2) The opens they do report are padded:
And at the very bottom of a May 2024 report forwarded to us by an agent it says (in tiny 8 pixel fine print):
"Reported numbers are based on verified open tracking and enterprise level domains."
We call it "fine print" because this is the actual size:
Reported numbers are based on verified open tracking and enterprise level domains.
That fine print "and enterprise domains" tells you ZipYourFlyer does NOT report actual verified email opens. They toss in some undocumented padding for "enterprise level domains".
Back in May 2018—before we publicly exposed this tactic—they outright admitted (in fine print) adding a "calculation" on top of measured opens (color added for emphasis):
"*Reported numbers are a combination of verified open tracking and a calculation accounting for Enterprise level and other email browsers which do not report."
Bottom line: if they had good email results they would separately itemize their VERIFIED email opens, in our opinion. Like we do.
