Having insight into how your emails are processed and engaged with is key to having a healthy and successful email program.
SendGrid (Certain’s 3rd Party Email Provider) provides robust analytics and tracking capabilities.
As emails are sent and recipients interact with them, events are triggered within SendGrid.
SendGrid customers can be enabled with Event Webhooks to receive notifications for the nine types of email events described below.
Some events are informational and can be used to create instant dashboards.
Other events can be saved to query later.
Other events can be reacted to immediately.
Below is a quick breakdown of each of the nine events:
1. Processed (Tracked by Certain)
This event fires when SendGrid receives an individual message and prepares it to be delivered.
Processed is the top of the funnel unless the message is dropped.
Each message pushed to SendGrid creates a processed event.
2. Dropped (Not Tracked by Certain)
There are a number of reasons an email will not even be sent to a recipient for delivery.
This event informs a system when an email has been dropped.
The dropped event provides a reason for the drop.
Examples of drop reasons include spam content when a spam checker app is enabled.
Another drop reason is that SendGrid sees the recipient has unsubscribed previously.
3. Deferred (Tracked by Certain)
When an email cannot immediately be delivered, but an email has not been completely rejected, the deferred event fires.
Deferred is sometimes called a soft bounce.
SendGrid continues to try for 72 hours to deliver a deferred message.
After 72 hours, the deferral turns into a block.
4. Bounce (Tracked by Certain)
If a server cannot or will not deliver a message, SendGrid fires a bounce event.
Bounces often are caused by outdated or incorrectly entered email addresses.
A sender often does not know a bounced email address until the email bounces.
This event helps ensure the email address does not bounce again by removing the address from email lists.
5. Delivered (Tracked by Certain)
When an email has been accepted at the receiving server, the delivered event fires.
Delivered does not guarantee that the email was placed in the recipient’s inbox.
Delivered only begins an opaque process.
The remaining four events provide hints about whether anyone will ever see the delivered email.
For more information on the first 5 events mentioned above, read the following post from our delivery expert, Will Boyd: Delivered, Bounced, Blocked, and Deferred Emails: What Does It All Mean?
6. Open (Tracked by Certain)
An opened email is the first step toward the action a recipient takes.
This event fires every time an email is viewed with images turned on.
Like all email service providers, SendGrid uses a transparent image beacon to track opened messages.
The transparent image beacon is currently the only way a sender can tell if an email has been opened.
To learn how image opens are affected by Google’s new image caching, read our blog post on the topic here.
7. Click
A click event fires when a recipient interacts with a link.
The recipient clicks a link in order to confirm a newly registered account.
A click event can also occur when a recipient clicks a link to view a recommended product.
SendGrid tracks the interaction and fires a click event.
8. Spam Report (Not Tracked by Certain)
Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide a feedback loop.
A feedback loop sends specific spam complaints to the Email Service Providers (ESPs), like SendGrid.
When SendGrid receives a notice, SendGrid fires a spam event.
The spam event can be used to react appropriately.
The spam event can also help ensure that another email is not sent to the spam complaint address.
9. Unsubscribe (Not Tracked by Certain)
This event fires when a recipient unsubscribes from mailings.
Reacting immediately to an unsubscribe by removing the email from lists can pay long term dividends.
Immediate unsubscribe handling can result in fewer spam reports.
Immediate unsubscribe handling can result in a higher engagement rate.
Source
https://sendgrid.com/blog/the-nine-events-of-email/