Email Tracking and Analytics

Broadcast gives you two complementary ways to track how your emails perform: built-in native tracking and ESP (Email Service Provider) webhooks. Together, they provide a complete picture of delivery, engagement, and subscriber behavior.

Two Tracking Methods

You can use either method on its own, or combine both for the most accurate data.

Native Tracking

Enabling Tracking

When creating or editing a broadcast or sequence step, open the Settings tab. You will see two toggles:

• Track opens - Inserts an invisible tracking pixel into the email
• Track clicks - Rewrites links to pass through the Broadcast tracking system

Enable the ones you want and save. Tracking settings are configured per broadcast or sequence step, so you can track some campaigns and skip others.

How Open Tracking Works

When you enable open tracking, Broadcast embeds a tiny, invisible image (a tracking pixel) at the bottom of your email. When a subscriber’s email client loads images, it requests that pixel from the Broadcast server, and the open is recorded.

Limitations to keep in mind:

• Some email clients (Apple Mail Privacy Protection, Outlook with images disabled, etc.) block external images or pre-fetch them automatically. This means open rates are an approximation, not an exact count.
• Bot and security scanners at corporate mail servers may trigger false opens.
• Open tracking works best as a relative metric (comparing one campaign to another) rather than an absolute number.

How Click Tracking Works

When you enable click tracking, Broadcast rewrites every link in your email to route through the tracking system. When a subscriber clicks a link:

1. The request hits the Broadcast tracking server
2. The click is recorded with metadata (timestamp, subscriber, URL, and more)
3. The subscriber is immediately redirected to the original destination via a 301 redirect

The redirect happens with minimal latency, so subscribers experience a seamless transition to the target page.

Viewing Broadcast Metrics

After a broadcast is sent, its detail page displays key performance metrics at a glance:

• Recipients - Total number of subscribers the broadcast was sent to
• Open rate - Percentage of recipients who opened the email
• Click rate - Percentage of recipients who clicked at least one link
• Velocity - How quickly engagement accumulated after sending

Delivery Analytics Chart

Below the summary metrics, a time-series chart shows activity over the life of the broadcast:

• Processed - Emails queued for sending
• Delivered - Emails accepted by the recipient’s mail server
• Opens - Cumulative opens over time
• Clicks - Cumulative clicks over time
• Bounces - Hard and soft bounces

This chart helps you understand when engagement peaks (usually within the first few hours) and how long the tail of activity extends.

Link Tracking Analytics

For deeper insight into what subscribers are clicking, open the Analytics sidebar on a broadcast’s detail page. Here you will find:

• Total links clicked - The number of distinct URLs that received at least one click
• Total clicks - The overall click count across all links
• Average clicks per link - A quick measure of how spread out engagement is across your content

Per-Link Details

Click on any individual link to see its detailed analytics:

• Total clicks - Every click on that link, including repeat clicks from the same subscriber
• Unique clicks - The number of distinct subscribers who clicked
• Timeline chart - A chart showing when clicks occurred over time
• Geographic breakdown - Where clicks originated by country, region, and city

Click Data Captured

Each click event records the following data points:

This data powers the geographic breakdown and helps you understand which devices and locations your audience uses most.

ESP Webhooks

While native tracking captures opens and clicks, ESP webhooks fill in the delivery side of the picture. Your email provider can notify Broadcast about events that happen after the email leaves the sending server.

Why Webhooks Add Value

When Broadcast receives a hard bounce or spam complaint via webhook, it automatically suppresses that subscriber to protect your sender reputation. This auto-suppression runs in the background with no action needed from you.

Setting Up ESP Webhooks

1. Navigate to Settings > ESP Integrations in your Broadcast dashboard
2. Select your email provider (Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, or Resend)
3. Copy the webhook URL shown for your provider
4. In your provider’s dashboard, paste the webhook URL into the appropriate webhook or event notification settings
5. Select the events you want forwarded (delivery, bounce, complaint, etc.)
6. Save and test

Each provider has slightly different setup steps. The webhook URL displayed in Broadcast is unique to your account and provider, so events are routed correctly.

Statistics API

If you want to pull tracking data into external dashboards or reporting tools, the Broadcast API offers statistics endpoints:

Summary - Retrieve aggregate metrics for a broadcast:

curl "https://app.sendbroadcast.com/api/v1/broadcasts/:id/statistics/summary" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"

Timeline - Get time-series data for charting:

curl "https://app.sendbroadcast.com/api/v1/broadcasts/:id/statistics/timeline" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"

Links - List all tracked links with click counts:

curl "https://app.sendbroadcast.com/api/v1/broadcasts/:id/statistics/links" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"

See the API documentation for full details on authentication and response formats.

Privacy Considerations

Tracking gives you valuable insight, but it is important to handle subscriber data responsibly:

• Be transparent - Let subscribers know you track engagement in your privacy policy. Many regulations (GDPR, CCPA) require this disclosure.
• Email scanners and bots - Corporate security tools sometimes scan links or load images automatically. This can inflate open and click numbers. Use unique clicks and open rates as your primary metrics to minimize the impact.
• Bot traffic - Some automated systems click every link in an email as a security check. If you see unusually high click rates from specific ISPs or regions, bot traffic may be the cause. Per-link geographic data can help you identify these patterns.
• Apple Mail Privacy Protection - Apple pre-fetches tracking pixels for Apple Mail users, which inflates open counts. Consider click rate as a more reliable engagement signal for audiences with high Apple Mail usage.

Best Practices

1. Enable both native tracking and ESP webhooks - Native tracking gives you opens and clicks; webhooks give you delivery, bounces, and complaints. Together you get the full picture.
2. Focus on click rate over open rate - Click rate is a more reliable and actionable metric, since open tracking has known limitations across email clients.
3. Monitor bounces regularly - A rising bounce rate hurts your sender reputation. ESP webhooks catch bounces automatically, but review your suppression list periodically.
4. Compare campaigns over time - Absolute numbers vary based on list size. Track open and click rates as percentages to measure real improvement.
5. Use link analytics to refine content - If subscribers consistently click certain types of links, create more content around those topics.
6. Check geographic data for anomalies - Unusual spikes from a single region may indicate bot activity rather than genuine engagement.

Want to send transactional emails and track their delivery? Learn about Transactional Emails next.