don't understand invite stats

everydaymemories

I'm having trouble understanding the invitation statistics that are recorded in my control panel regarding emails I send to people for viewing my photos. The help section did not help me, nor did I find another thread that explained what I'm confused about. Here's an example.

I just sent an invitation to 2 "recipients." Now technically one of those recipients is up to 20 people, because it's a yahoogroup. So, I could have up to 21 people total viewing this particular gallery.

Now, after having sent this invite last night, this morning the stats are: Read-55, Clicked-10, and Recipients-2. The last number is clear to me. But how can "Read" be 55? How does smugmug know when an email is read anyway? Does "Clicked" refer to clicking the photo in the email or clicking a photo in the gallery to see it bigger?

I'm so confused about "read" and "clicked." Thanks if you can clarify it for me!

Smug Eric

So how this works is you have probably had people reading the message multiple times. Our setup is pretty smart about knowing when people look at the emails. You are correct with the "Clicked" too. Once they click the image it takes them to a larger version of the image online. I hope this clears things up for you.

Eric
Support Hero

everydaymemories

So my invitation has been read 55 times, but my gallery only visited 10 times? It's starting to make some sense, although I'm surprised by the email being read 5 more times than clicked.

And again, I'm wondering how Smugmug knows an email has been read?

bfrank

Sam doubt

Smug Eric wrote:

So how this works is you have probably had people reading the message multiple times. Our setup is pretty smart about knowing when people look at the emails. You are correct with the "Clicked" too. Once they click the image it takes them to a larger version of the image online. I hope this clears things up for you.

Eric
Support Hero

I took the smugmug account recently, and I see that some of the invites I sent -they are not read but it is clicked. How is that possible I know it can work the other way round where someone reads the message but doesn't click the images.

shrekie

bfrank wrote:

I took the smugmug account recently, and I see that some of the invites I sent -they are not read but it is clicked. How is that possible I know it can work the other way round where someone reads the message but doesn't click the images.

Yes, I have been struggling to understand these stats from day one. I have many photos where the number of times clicked is greater than 1, and the number of times read is zero, which absolutely does not make sense.

Also, I have many instances where an email has been read many more times than it has been clicked. For example, I have a recent invitation that was read 38 times and clicked ZERO times. Surely this must be a mistake as no sane person would read a short email 38 times and not click on the photo? This is not an isolated incident either as I have stats of other invites which have been read up to nearly 20 times with no clicks. What's happening here?

OC ZOOM

Clicked? Read?
I wish someone from Smugmug could explain this. The previous explanations only get me more confused.

rainforest1155

shrekie wrote:

Yes, I have been struggling to understand these stats from day one. I have many photos where the number of times clicked is greater than 1, and the number of times read is zero, which absolutely does not make sense.

Also, I have many instances where an email has been read many more times than it has been clicked. For example, I have a recent invitation that was read 38 times and clicked ZERO times. Surely this must be a mistake as no sane person would read a short email 38 times and not click on the photo? This is not an isolated incident either as I have stats of other invites which have been read up to nearly 20 times with no clicks. What's happening here?

share email stats work as follow:
When the photo in the email is displayed, it counts as 'read'. Only if the link in the email is clicked, this counts as a 'click'.

By default, many email programs don't load images that are in html emails. Then the photo isn't loaded from our server and we can't know if the email has been read or not. Still, the recipient is able to click on the link, which then generates a 'click'.

Surely, many people view emails multiple times and each time they display the photo in the email, it generates a 'read' hit. One reason could be to show the photo in the email to other people.
Or, share emails are forwarded to other people. Then their reads and clicks would be counted, too. We can't distinguish between the original recipient and any forwards.

Additionally, people may chose to view just the photo in the email and not click on the link. Either they don't want to view more photos or they don't realize that there are more photos.

I hope that helps,
Sebastian

shrekie

rainforest1155 wrote:

share email stats work as follow:
When the photo in the email is displayed, it counts as 'read'. Only if the link in the email is clicked, this counts as a 'click'.

By default, many email programs don't load images that are in html emails. Then the photo isn't loaded from our server and we can't know if the email has been read or not. Still, the recipient is able to click on the link, which then generates a 'click'.

Surely, many people view emails multiple times and each time they display the photo in the email, it generates a 'read' hit. One reason could be to show the photo in the email to other people.
Or, share emails are forwarded to other people. Then their reads and clicks would be counted, too. We can't distinguish between the original recipient and any forwards.

Additionally, people may chose to view just the photo in the email and not click on the link. Either they don't want to view more photos or they don't realize that there are more photos.

I hope that helps,
Sebastian

Thanks Sebastian, yes, that does clear things up quite a bit.