Campaign click counts look wrong

The campaign report on Analytics counts carefully, and some of its choices make its figures lower, or different, from a simple count of link visits. Before assuming something is wrong, check which of these applies.

If the report says Not counted, or a notice says clicks were counted only for part of the period, the campaign's clicks were not counted then: its own Count clicks switch was off, or your organisation had click tracking off on Account > Settings. Its links went straight to their destination, so there was nothing to count. See "When clicks are not counted" in Read the campaign report.

1. The report leaves out security scanners

Corporate mail security, such as Microsoft Defender Safe Links, follows every link in every message it scans to see where it goes. Each of those visits looks exactly like a real click. Footer365 recognises them and leaves them out of the headline figures.

Check: the Left out figure on the campaign's report shows how many visits were set aside, and what share of all visits that was. Hover over it, or look at the Left out of these figures card, to see how many were Link protection and how many were left out by the two tests below. The Links table shows the same split for each link.

A campaign sent mostly to large organisations can have far more link protection visits than real clicks. That is normal, and it is why the figure is shown rather than hidden.

Footer365 recognises scanners by how they identify themselves. A few scanners present themselves as an ordinary web browser and cannot be told apart from a person by that alone. The timing test below catches most of those.

A click left out for any reason is still recorded, still takes the reader to the link's destination, and is in Export CSV, where the Left out because column gives its reason. The Link protection column still reads Yes or No, as it always has.

2. Clicks from your offices

Your own staff click your banners too, for example when they open a copy of a message they were sent. Those clicks are not interest from your recipients. Footer365 leaves out the clicks that come from your offices' addresses once you list them on Account > Settings, in Clicks left out of your figures, under Your offices. The list starts empty, because only you know your offices' addresses.

• Enter one address, such as 203.0.113.17, or a range written as an address, a slash and the prefix length, such as 203.0.113.0/24 or 2001:db8::/48, and an optional name, then select Add. A range written with the host part, such as 203.0.113.45/24, is saved as the range it names, 203.0.113.0/24.
• List your public addresses, as the internet sees them: the 10.x, 172.16.x and 192.168.x addresses inside an office are refused, because a click never reaches Footer365 from one.
• A range must be narrower than /8 for IPv4 and narrower than /32 for IPv6, since anything wider is more than one organisation's. Up to 100 addresses or ranges can be listed.
• Your address as Footer365 sees it now shows the address a click from your browser would come from, and puts it in the box. Use it only while you are in the office, or you add your home address instead.
• If your staff browse through a cloud proxy or VPN service, their clicks arrive from that service's addresses, which change and are shared with the service's other customers. List only addresses your organisation owns, so you never leave out clicks from somebody else.

To remove an address, select the cross beside it and confirm. Clicks from it are counted from then on.

3. Clicks within seconds of sending

Some mail security checks every link the moment a message arrives while presenting itself as an ordinary browser, so it cannot be recognised by name. A person reading the message almost never clicks that quickly. Under Clicks soon after sending, Leave out clicks within a number of seconds of sending leaves those clicks out.

• It is on for every organisation at 10 seconds. Choose from 1 to 60 seconds, or turn it off, and select Save.
• The time is measured from when Footer365 signed the message, which Footer365 knows from the reference in the message's links. A click from a message sent before that reference existed, or whose record has passed its retention, cannot be timed, and is counted unless another test leaves it out.

The tests apply to clicks from when they are set

A click keeps the reason it was given when it was recorded. Changing your offices or the seconds applies to clicks from about a minute later, and never to clicks already recorded, so a figure you have already seen does not move. The tests apply to campaign clicks and to clicks on a signature's own links; survey answers, contact cards and image loads are not affected.

4. Clicks and unique clicks are different numbers

• Clicks counts every click by a person.
• The figure beneath it, "unique", counts at most one click per message. One person clicking the same email three times is one unique click.

Click-through rate is unique clicks as a share of Messages sent. The line beneath it gives the rate counting every click, for comparison. Use the unique figures to compare one campaign with another.

5. Messages sent is not the number of people reached

Messages sent counts messages that carried the banner. Email signed with a template that has no Campaign element carries no banner and is not counted, nor is email kept in plain text, which has no room for one. The line beneath it counts recipients those messages reached, with repeats: one message to five people counts five. Footer365 never records who a message went to, so neither figure is a count of individual people.

6. Your website analytics shows a different number

Footer365 counts the click. Your website analytics counts what happens when the visitor arrives, and the two measure different things:

• A visitor may leave before the page finishes loading, or block analytics in their browser or through a cookie choice. Footer365 still counted the click.
• Visits Footer365 left out, by link protection, from your offices or within seconds of sending, may appear in your analytics, depending on how it filters automated and internal traffic.

UTM tagging helps you find these visits in your own analytics. The In your own analytics section of the report shows Tagging on or Tagging off. With tagging on, each link arrives at your site with campaign tags, and the report shows an example to search for. UTM tagging

7. Some clicks show as "Not recorded", or cannot be placed

Breakdowns by sender and message type rely on a reference Footer365 adds to each message's banner links. Clicks from messages sent before that reference existed are counted in the totals but shown as "Not recorded" in the breakdowns.

Under Organisations, a click is only credited to an organisation when its message went to that one organisation. A message sent to people at several organisations carries the same link to all of them, so Footer365 cannot tell which of them clicked, and says so rather than guessing.

Under Department, the department is the one each sender has in your synced directory now, not the one they had when the message was sent. A sender the directory holds no department for is counted as "No department", and one who has left the directory, or whose address matches nobody in it, as "No longer in the directory". Change a department in Microsoft 365 and the report follows once Footer365 has synced your directory.

Under Country, a click made before countries were recorded shows as "Not recorded". The country is worked out when the click is made, from the address it came from, and the address is cleared after the privacy period, so a click that has lost its address cannot be given a country afterwards. An address the country data does not place, such as a private or reserved one, shows as "Unknown". A reader behind a company network or a VPN is placed where that network meets the internet, so a country can differ from where the person sits.

8. The privacy period has passed

For each click, Footer365 records the visitor's IP address and browser for a limited period, then clears them. This is set under Account, then Settings, in Campaign click privacy: leave Keep for empty to follow the Footer365 period, or set your own up to 365 days. Click data and privacy

Clearing those details never deletes the click itself, so your campaign figures do not change when it happens. The mail app, device type and country are kept with each click, so those breakdowns are not affected either.

9. The date range

The report covers a period. A click on an older message still counts, on the day it happened. Typical time to click is the median time between a message being sent and its click, so one click on a very old email does not distort it.

Clicks over time counts each day in UTC, while When people click counts the day of the week and the hour in your own time zone. A click made near midnight can therefore fall on one day in the first and the next day in the second, and neither is wrong.

10. Clicks on a signature's own links

A template's own links, such as its website and social icons, are counted only once Count clicks on this template's links is turned on in its editor and the template is saved. On the Signature links card on Analytics, a template showing Not counted has it off. The same filtering applies as for campaigns: link protection, clicks from your offices and clicks within seconds of sending are left out and shown on the template's report, and unique clicks count each message once.

Some clicks on signature links are never counted, by design:

• Clicks on email and phone links, which open the reader's own app rather than a web address.
• Clicks on a link the template's author unticked, which goes straight to its address.
• Clicks in messages sent before counting was turned on, or after it was turned off.
• Clicks in a signature the sender picked by hand from the Outlook add-in's own list, which keeps its links direct.

A message signed while Footer365 could not give a link its tracking address carries that link direct, so it is not counted either. Count clicks on your signature's links

Related

• The campaign report
• Analytics and coverage
• Count clicks on your signature's links