Webhook reporting

Email reporting

Email Performance

The Email Performance panel outlines how well your message has performed across various dimensions. The metrics in this panel vary depending on your chosen messaging channel, and whether or not you are running a multivariate test. You can select the Preview icon to view your message for each variant or channel.

If you want to simplify your view, click Add/Remove Columns and clear any metrics as desired. By default, all metrics are displayed.

Heatmaps

Using heatmaps, you can see how successful different links in a single email campaign are. From the Message Analytics section, go to the Email Performance panel. Select Preview & Heatmap to view a preview of your email campaign and the heatmap. Alternatively, you can select the hyperlink in the variant name to view the heatmap.

In this view, you can use the Show Heatmap toggle to bring up a visual view of your email that shows the overall frequency and location of clicks within the lifespan of the campaign. In the Link Table by Total Clicks panel, you can view all of the links in your email campaign and sort by total clicks. This can provide additional insight on where your users navigate. To save a copy of the heatmap for reference, select the download button.

Heatmap unsubscribe clicks versus campaign analytics

Clicks on unsubscribe links in the heatmap may differ from the Unsubscribers metric in campaign analytics:

• When you use a custom unsubscribe URL in your message body, Braze treats that link as a standard tracked link for heatmap purposes—it appears in the Link Table by Total Clicks like any other link. When Braze processes an unsubscription from the Braze-provided unsubscribe link, the Unsubscribers metric increments. Custom unsubscribe URLs do not increment that metric unless you update users through the API.
• When a user unsubscribes using the list-unsubscribe header (a one-click unsubscribe option shown by some inbox providers), that action increments Unsubscribers in campaign analytics but doesn’t appear as a click in the heatmap. If the message uses Unsubscribe from specific subscription group, Braze unsubscribes the user from only the configured subscription group instead of globally. Availability of this option varies by recipient because inbox providers differ in whether they render or support the list-unsubscribe header.

For a complete view of unsubscribe behavior, review both the heatmap link breakdown and the Unsubscribers metric. For more details, see Why Unsubscribes and unsubscribe-link clicks can differ.

Mobile-only links in the heatmap

The heatmap only shows heat signatures for links visible at the selected preview size.

Links that only appear in the mobile layout are hidden in Desktop (and may be hidden in Overall, depending on preview width), so those clicks do not show as heat signatures. Those links still appear in the Link Table by Total Clicks panel with their total clicks and percentages.

To view heat signatures for mobile-only links, select Mobile. The mobile preview matches the drag-and-drop editor’s mobile breakpoint (620 px). If the email switches layouts only at a narrower width, those links stay hidden even in the Mobile preview size.

Images

We recommend enabling CORS for your image URLs to help prevent images from breaking in heatmap previews and exports.

If images are missing from an export, work with your developers so image assets allow cross-origin access: the server should return the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header with either * or your Braze dashboard domain.

Email metrics

Here are some key email-specific metrics that you won’t see in other channels. To see the full definitions of all email metrics used in Braze, refer to our Email Analytics Glossary.

Email performance metrics

Metric	Definition
Unique Clicks	Unique Clicks is the distinct number of recipients who have clicked a link within a message at least once and is measured by dispatch_id. This is tracked over a seven-day period for email and measured by dispatch_id. This includes clicks on Braze-provided unsubscribe links. This number should be between 5–10%. Anything greater than 10% is exceptional!
Unique Opens	Unique Opens is the total number (or percentage) of delivered messages that have been opened by a single user at least once and are tracked over a seven-day period. For email, this is tracked over a 7 day period. This number should be between 30–40%. Anything greater than 40% is exceptional!
Click-to-Open Rate	Click-to-Open Rate is the percentage of opened emails that have been clicked by a single user or machine at least once, and is only available in the Report Builder.
Spam Rate	Spam is the total number of emails delivered that were marked as "spam" by the recipient. While Braze doesn't change the subscription state of these users, these users will be automatically excluded in future emails, unless you're sending a transactional email, which is configured to "send to all users including unsubscribe". If this metric is greater than 0.08, that could be a sign that either your message copy is too salesy, or you should reconsider your email address collection methods (to confirm you're messaging those who are interested in your correspondence).
Unsubscribers or Unsub	Unsubscribers or Unsub is the number of messages resulting in an unsubscription. Unsubscriptions occur when Braze processes an unsubscribe from the Braze unsubscribe URL in the message body or from the list-unsubscribe header when that path is handled by Braze.
Other Opens	Other Opens includes human opens that are not impacted by MPP (such as a user opening an email in the Gmail app or on Gmail desktop, which subsequently fires a tracking pixel and logs a regular open). Other Opens are typically human opens, but there could also be scenarios where a machine opens the mail (a bot or an inbox service provider like Gmail or Yahoo). It is also possible for a user to open an email on a non-iOS device and log the Other Open before a Machine Open is logged. Because Machine Opens can be user-driven, the relationship between Machine Opens and Other Opens is not human versus non-human, but rather, MPP-impacted versus not MPP-impacted. While Other Opens can still be relied on to measure some portion of human opens, it's not currently possible to determine the percentage of Machine Opens that are human-driven, so determining a precise "true" open rate is not currently possible. For MPP-enabled users: +1 Other Open(s): The user proactively opened an email on a non-iOS device +1 Machine Open(s) and +1 Other Opens: Apple pre-fetched the message or the user proactively opened an email on an iOS device and proactively opened an email on a non-iOS device For non-MPP-enabled users: +1 Other Open(s): The user proactively opened an email on any device
Estimated Real Opens	Estimated Real Opens is an estimate of how many unique opens there would be if machine opens did not exist, and is the result of a proprietary Braze statistical model. See the following section for details.
Machine Opens	Machine Opens includes both non-human and human opens that indicate an open by an Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)-enabled user. This means that a user can log multiple Machine Opens. Machine Opens are not automatically generated if the device isn't connected to Wi-Fi, so a user can potentially open an email in the Apple Mail app before Apple pre-fetches images, which still results in a Machine Opens. For MPP-enabled users: 1+ Machine Open: Apple pre-fetched the message or the user proactively opened an email on an iOS device 2+ Machine Opens: Braze does not have visibility into human versus non-human opens, so this may be made up of multiple human opens (across one Apple device or multiple) or a combination of human opens and 1 open associated with Apple pre-fetching the message
Bounces	Bounces is the total number of messages that were unsuccessfully delivered to the intended recipients.
Hard Bounce	A Hard Bounce is when an email fails to deliver to the recipient due to a permanent delivery error. A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn't exist or because the recipient is unknown.
Soft Bounce	A Soft Bounce is when an email fails to deliver to the recipient due to a temporary delivery error, even though the recipient’s email address is valid. A soft bounce might occur because the recipient's inbox is full, the server was down, or the message was too large for the recipient's inbox.
Deferral	A Deferral is when an email was not immediately delivered, but Braze retries the email for up to 72 hours after this temporary delivery failure to maximize the chances of successful delivery before attempts for that specific campaign are stopped.

Deliveries and bounces

The dashboard highlights Hard Bounces. Some Bounces may be soft bounces and won’t match that count alone. You can approximate soft bounces with this formula:

Sends − (Deliveries + Hard Bounces) ≈ Soft Bounces

Deliveries can rise during your email service provider (ESP) retry window while retries succeed, while Sends and hard bounces for a one-time send stay fixed once the send completes. SendGrid and SparkPost retry for up to 72 hours; Amazon SES retries for up to 14 hours.

Common delivery troubleshooting scenarios

When reviewing your email analytics, keep these patterns in mind:

• Gap between Sends and (Deliveries + Hard Bounces): During the ESP retry window after a one-time send, this gap often reflects soft bounces or deferrals still being retried. After retries finish, any remaining gap usually means messages that soft bounced and were never delivered—those sends are not counted toward campaign Deliveries or Bounces. Use the formula in Deliveries and bounces to approximate in-flight soft bounces.
• Low Deliveries after retries finish: If delivery rates stay low once retries have finished, compare this send’s volume to your typical patterns. Mailbox providers may defer, throttle, or soft bounce mail when volume spikes relative to your sender reputation. You may see messages such as Email was deferred due to the following reason(s): [IPs were throttled by recipient server] in the Message Activity Log. Use delivery speed rate limiting to pace large sends, and refer to Throttled IPs for additional troubleshooting steps.
• Soft bounces and deferrals not shown in campaign analytics: Campaign analytics highlight Hard Bounces but do not include Soft Bounces or Deferrals as separate columns. Monitor these events in the Message Activity Log, with the Soft Bounced segment filter, or through Currents deferral events. For how retries work, see Deferrals.
• Delivery percentages that may not add up to 100%: Deliveries %, Bounce %, and Spam Rate % may not sum to 100% of Sends. Messages that soft bounce and are never delivered after the ESP retry window are not counted in campaign Deliveries or Bounces, so they can leave a portion of Sends unaccounted for in those rates. Wait until retries finish before judging final delivery performance, or use the formula in Deliveries and bounces to estimate how many sends are still in retry.

Clicks without an open event

A click can be logged without an open when the open pixel never loads. For example, the message is clipped in Gmail, or the user has disabled images (the open pixel is usually at the footer). Some clients proxy images (such as Apple Mail), so the open may log when the server first fetches the pixel, not when the user reads the mail. Corporate domains often block images by default.

A click and open can also land on different days: a user might click on May 16 with images off (no open), then open in webmail on May 17 (open logged then).

Higher Unique clicks than Unique opens

You might see Unique clicks far outpace Unique opens (for example, several unique clicks for each unique open) even when you expect a lower ratio from your audience. That pattern usually means opens are undercounted, clicks are inflated, or both. However, this does not mean Braze is mis-counting clicks in isolation.

Braze records an email open when the open tracking pixel loads. That pixel is a small transparent image (often described as 1 x 1 px) Braze adds to the message HTML. If the pixel never loads, no open is logged for that view, but link clicks can still register—so your click-to-open rate and the balance between these two metrics can look skewed.

The mailbox never loaded the open tracking pixel

The pixel might not load when:

• The message is clipped. Long HTML pushes content—including the pixel at the bottom—behind a “View entire message” style cutoff. In Gmail, messages larger than about 102 KB are often clipped, which can prevent the pixel from loading until the full message is opened (and sometimes not even then, depending on the client).
• Images are blocked or restricted. Stricter inbox security (common on corporate accounts) can block remote images until the recipient chooses to load them, so the open pixel does not fire even though they click tracked links.
• The message is in spam or bulk folders. Many providers do not load remote images (including the open pixel) in those folders by default.

What you can do

• Clipping: Shorten and simplify the HTML, remove unused styles or assets, and keep the overall message size within client limits. For Gmail, aim for under about 102 KB as described in Email size.
• Inbox security and image loading: Only the recipient (or their IT policy) can change whether images load by default.
• Spam placement: Focus on improving email deliverability and list hygiene. If mail is consistently landing in spam and metrics look wrong, contact Braze Support.

Security or bot activity on links

Some email security products follow links to scan for threats. Those requests can log a click without loading images, so you can see click activity without a matching open.

Deferrals

Deferred or deferral is when an email was not immediately delivered, but Braze retries the email through your ESP after this temporary delivery failure to maximize the chances of successful delivery before attempts for that specific campaign are stopped. SendGrid and SparkPost retry for up to 72 hours; Amazon SES retries for up to 14 hours. Typical reasons for deferrals include reputation-based email volume rate-limiting from the inbox provider, temporary connectivity issues, or DNS errors.

Deferrals differ from Soft Bounces. If no email was successfully delivered during this retry period, Braze will send one soft bounce event per attempted campaign sent. Before February 25, 2025, these retries were counted as multiple soft bounces for 1 campaign send.

Note that Deferrals are currently only available using Currents or Braze Snowflake features (such as Query Builder, SQL Segment, Snowflake Data Sharing). If you’re interested in Deferrals in campaign or Canvas analytics, submit product feedback.

Estimated real open rate

This statistic uses a proprietary analytical model created by Braze to reconstruct an estimate of the campaign’s unique open rate as if machine opens did not exist. While we receive labels of Machine Opens on some open events from email senders, these labels can often label actual opens as machine opens. In other words, the Other Opens are likely an underestimate of real opens (by actual users). Instead, Braze uses click data from each campaign to infer the rate at which actual humans opened the message. This compensates for various machine opening mechanisms, including Apple’s MPP.

Braze periodically evaluates Estimated Real Open Rate after a campaign has sent enough emails. After an evaluation, Braze may reevaluate the metric once after at least 72 hours, even if the campaign’s send volume is unchanged. Additional reevaluations require increased send volume.

Braze initially evaluates up to 10,000 delivered emails per variation, but reaching that volume doesn’t guarantee an estimate. Each variation also needs enough qualifying clicks from recipients with Machine Opens and recipients with no Machine Opens.

If qualifying click activity remains insufficient, the column displays “–”. When Braze reevaluates the variation, additional qualifying clicks may produce an estimate.

Considerations

Estimated Real Open Rate is only available in campaigns, and is not reported in Current events. This metric is only retroactively calculated for active campaigns launched before November 14, 2023.

Handling increases in click rates

Open rates can be an insightful metric to track for your email campaigns. However, these open rates aren’t necessarily accurate indicators of human engagement with email campaigns. An open event, by definition, occurs when a user opens an email, meaning a transparent open tracking pixel was successfully downloaded.

Additionally, use of security scanning tools can inflate open rates. Some of these tools protect their users by scanning incoming emails for malicious content by clicking links to verify their legitimacy. These clicks are often referred to as “bot clicks” or “non-human interaction” (NHI).

Ultimately, after an email leaves our servers, we have limited visibility into what happens next, but here are recommendations for managing NHI affecting your results:

1. Be aware that this can happen to any sender and nearly any recipient. Clicks, like opens, are not entirely reliable indicators of human interaction with your messages, meaning NHI is not preventable.
2. Higher positive engagement tends to correlate with lower NHI, so it’s important to follow email messaging best practices. This includes getting explicit permission from your users to send email and sunsetting unengaged subscribers on a regular cadence.
3. Use HTTPS links in your emails when possible. NHI is less common for senders using secure links.
4. If you use a single-click unsubscribe process, consider creating a preference center that takes users to a page to edit and manage their notification preferences. This can be helpful because NHI can inadvertently unsubscribe users.
5. Consider using other metrics to measure your email marketing success, such as conversions, app sessions, or site visits.
6. Add a hidden link in your email campaigns. This link would be something that a human wouldn’t notice like white-on-white text or a punctuation mark. Bots tend to click all links, so you can conclude that users generating click events on the invisible link are actually the result of NHI, so the open or click doesn’t necessarily indicate positive engagement.

Troubleshooting

Bounced emails

• 554 5.7.1 [internal] recipient address was suppressed due to customer policy: Try another address, re-engage on another channel, or remove the address from the suppression list for your own test addresses only. Avoid removing real user suppressions as that can hurt reputation.
• Mailbox full / invalid account: Often a list-quality signal. Prioritize users who recently opened or clicked (for example, the last 30–60 days) while you clean inactive or bad addresses.

Soft bounce retry behavior

When an email soft bounces due to temporary issues (such as mailbox full, server temporarily unavailable, or other transient deliverability failures), Braze automatically retries delivery for up to 72 hours. The number of retry attempts varies by receiver.

If the email is not successfully delivered after the retry period, Braze logs one soft bounce event for that campaign send. These soft bounces don’t appear in campaign analytics, but you can:

• Monitor them in the Message Activity Log to see bounce reasons
• Use the Soft Bounced segment filter to exclude these users from future sends

Because of this retry period, email delivery metrics (deliveries, bounces, and spam rate) may not add up to 100% for campaigns where soft-bounced emails ultimately fail to deliver.

For more information on soft bounces, see the Email analytics glossary.

Invalid domains

Errors like unable to get mx info often mean many targets use bad domains (for example, typos). Segment, export, correct, and re-import those profiles.

Throttled IPs

You may see the message Email was deferred due to the following reason(s): [IPs were throttled by recipient server] in the Message Activity Log if a mailbox provider temporarily slows or blocks delivery from your IP because of volume, reputation, or both. Braze retries deferred messages; if deferrals cluster from this, you often see elevated soft bounces alongside them.

This pattern usually means you’re sending faster than the mailbox provider accepts for your current reputation. In addition to improving engagement and list quality, use delivery speed rate limiting to cap how quickly messages leave Braze for a campaign or Canvas. That helps reduce throttling while you work with your deliverability team on longer-term fixes.

If throttling persists for specific domains, reduce volume to those domains and contact Braze deliverability support for guidance.

Unknown IP reputation status

If your email performance report shows an “unknown” value for IP reputation, this may be related to a Google Postmaster Tools outage. Google Postmaster Tools provides reputation data for Gmail deliverability, and temporary service disruptions can result in missing or unknown reputation values.

If you see an unknown reputation status and have questions about your email deliverability, contact Braze Support.

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SELECT *
FROM USERS_MESSAGES_SMS_INBOUNDRECEIVE
WHERE app_group_id = 'app-group-id'
AND subscription_group_api_id = 'subscription_group_api_id'
AND action = 'Unsubscribed'
AND (campaign_id IS NOT NULL OR canvas_id IS NOT NULL);