How to interpret Adjusted and Estimated measures
Oracle Responsys has measures designated "Adjusted" and "Estimated". These measures help differentiate the data for contacts who use non-privacy protected mail clients from those who use privacy protected mail clients.
This topic contains additional information about how to interpret these measures.
How is Open Rate (Adjusted) different from Open Rate?
With privacy-protected mail clients, like Apple Mail with MPP, we do not have a way to know if an open signal was a true open, because the mail client can automatically download all content without the recipient reading the message. Responsys treats all opens from privacy-protected mail clients as Auto Opens. The system stores them separately and does not include them in the Open count.
This leads to a scenario where Open Rate, defined as (Opens/Delivered *100) seems skewed because the numerator (Opens) is now much smaller because the Auto Opens have been removed from Opens, but the denominator still is the same (that is, Delivered has not been adjusted to remove recipients using privacy-protected mail clients).
To fix this problem, Responsys created a new measure called Open Rate (Adjusted), defined as Opens/Delivered (Adjusted). For the Delivered (Adjusted) metric, we remove recipients from the Delivered count if they have been seen only on privacy-protected mail client for the last 7 days.
When is Open Rate (Adjusted) effective?
The adjustments made in Open Rate (Adjusted) are effective from May 8, 2022. Responsys has been tracking all opens and auto opens daily since May 8, 2022. The system removes recipients who have been seen only on privacy-protected mail clients for the last 7 days from all adjusted measures.
- For any campaigns sent on or after May 8, 2022, Open Rate (Adjusted) works as expected. Reporting Dashboard users will be able to see that Open Rate (Adjusted) is significantly different from Open Rate. Open Rate (Adjusted) should be similar to what rates were before privacy-protected mail clients.
- For any campaigns sent before May 8, 2022, Open Rate (Adjusted) and Open Rate will essentially look the same. Responsys does not perform any adjustments before May 8, 2022.
- For campaigns that span the May 8, 2022 date, dashboard users might not see the full power of the Open Rate (Adjusted) measure. Because Responsys does not adjust rates for any period before May 8, 2022, this dilutes the overall adjustment.
What is the difference between Sent (Adjusted) and Sent (Estimated)?
Responsys has been tracking all Opens and Auto Opens daily since May 8, 2022. The system removes recipients who have been seen only on privacy-protected mail clients for the last 7 days from all adjusted measures. This adjustment is applied at send time. All other recipients are considered to be using a non-privacy protected mail client (that is, they have not been seen only on privacy-protected mail clients for the last 7 days).
- Sent (Adjusted): Number of messages sent to non-privacy protected mail clients.
- Sent (Estimated): Number of messages sent to privacy-protected mail clients. Example: iOS 15 native mail clients.
Can Sent (Estimated) count be different from Auto Open count?
Yes this is possible.
Auto Opens: These are reported in our dashboards as soon we see the Auto Open event. However, we don't know for sure exactly when these are triggered by privacy protected mail clients like Apple MPP. There could be delay between sent time and the Auto Open event. Partners have reported in their testing that Auto Opens are possibly triggered only when a device is plugged in and on Wi-Fi. It's also possible there is some randomization baked in. This means that the Auto Opens count you see in say Live Report or Auto Opens Dashboard may not be fully be ramped up right away.
Sent (Estimated): This is a more reliable estimation of who is using a privacy protected mail client. This is because Responsys watches Auto Open activity daily and only those profiles exclusively seen with Auto Opens for the last 7 days are included in this count. This classification is applied based on what is known at Send Time and is not updated afterwards. Because this is based on multiple days of behavior this count is likely to be higher than the Auto Open count.
Privacy Protected Mail Client PETs