# Reading results honestly

Read this when reporting on a send, comparing sends, or when the owner asks
"was that good?".

## What each number means

| Number | What it really tells you | Trust it? |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered | Accepted by the receiving server. Not "in the inbox". | Yes |
| Bounced | Address doesn't exist (hard) or is temporarily full or blocked (soft). | Yes |
| Clicked (people) | Unique people who clicked, after filtering inbox scanners. | Yes, the main signal |
| Replied | People who wrote back. Small but strong. | Yes |
| Booked, bought | Only if bookings or orders are connected and matched to the email. | Yes, when connected |
| Unsubscribed | People who left. Read with the content and cadence. | Yes |
| Complaints | People who pressed "Report spam". The one that hurts deliverability most. | Yes |
| Opened | Apple Mail and many scanners open emails automatically, so this overstates reading by a lot. | Trend only |

Never decide "who is engaged", pick A/B winners, or praise a send on opens.

## Healthy ranges (rules of thumb, not benchmarks)

- Bounces under about 2% of a send. Above that, the list has old or bad
  addresses; stop and clean before sending again.
- Complaints well under 0.1%. Gmail treats 0.3% as a hard line.
- Unsubscribes: a fraction of a percent per send is normal. A spike means
  the content didn't match the promise, or the cadence went up.
- Clicks vary enormously by business and list. **Compare a business with its
  own previous sends**, not with published industry averages, which are
  built on opens and on businesses unlike this one.

## What to do about what you see

| You see | Likely cause | Do |
|---|---|---|
| Bounces jumped | An old or bought list was imported, or a typo-heavy form | Remove hard bounces, check the source, add form validation |
| Complaints | People don't remember agreeing, or got more than promised | Check where those people came from; slow the cadence; make the reason-for-receiving line clearer |
| Unsubscribes spiked | Off-promise content, or a sudden frequency jump | Send what the list promised; offer a less-often option |
| Clicks dropping send on send | Same email every time, or too often | Fewer, more specific emails; send to a narrower group |
| Gmail delivering to spam | Authentication, complaints, or a burst to cold addresses | See `deliverability.md` |

## How to report to the owner

One-line verdict, three numbers, at most three next steps, each tied to a
number. Credit honestly: a click is not a booking unless the booking is
connected.

> Your best send so far. 1,398 people got it, 214 clicked (15.3%, up from
> 14.7% in September), and nobody complained.
>
> Next: 46 people tagged hot water clicked the hot water
> link. I'd send them a short personal note about the new heat pump option.
> Want me to draft it?