Understanding Engagement Tracking

Engagement tracking tells you how readers are interacting with your emails — who's opening, who's clicking, who's gone quiet, and who's bouncing. This data powers both your campaign analytics and your segment filters, so understanding it helps you send smarter.

What gets tracked

Opens

An "open" is recorded when a subscriber loads your email in their email client. Technically, it works by embedding a tiny 1×1 pixel image in every email — when the image loads, Narrativ knows the email was opened.

Opens are tracked at two levels:

• Per-subscriber — each subscriber's total opens across all campaigns, shown in the Engagement column of the subscriber table
• Per-campaign — the open count and open rate shown in the Email Campaigns table

Clicks

A "click" is recorded when a subscriber clicks any link in your email (except the unsubscribe link). Clicks are more reliable than opens because they don't depend on image loading. If someone clicked, you know for certain they read the email.

Click counts are tracked per-subscriber (total lifetime clicks) and per-campaign (total clicks for that send).

Bounces

A bounce happens when an email can't be delivered to a subscriber's address. There are two types:

• Hard bounce — permanent delivery failure. The address doesn't exist or the domain is invalid. Narrativ automatically marks hard-bounced subscribers as unsubscribed to protect your sender reputation.
• Soft bounce — temporary failure (inbox full, server temporarily down). Narrativ retries soft bounces; if they persist across multiple sends, the subscriber may eventually be suppressed.

Unsubscribes

When a subscriber clicks the unsubscribe link in one of your emails, they're immediately removed from future campaigns. Their status changes to "Unsubscribed" in your subscriber table. This is tracked per-campaign so you can see which sends had higher unsubscribe rates.

Spam reports

If a subscriber marks your email as spam in their email client, Narrativ receives a notification and automatically unsubscribes them. This protects your sender reputation.

Limitations of open tracking

Open tracking via pixel has become less reliable in recent years:

• Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) — since iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, Apple Mail pre-fetches all email content (including tracking pixels) when emails arrive, not when users open them. This inflates open counts for Apple Mail users — every email "opens" immediately regardless of whether the reader actually opened it.
• Image blocking — some corporate email clients and privacy-focused clients block images by default, meaning their users won't show opens even if they read the email.

Because of this, clicks are a more reliable signal of genuine engagement than opens. An open rate of 50% might include a lot of Apple MPP pre-fetches, but a click tells you someone definitely interacted.

Engagement in your subscriber table

The Engagement column in the subscriber table shows each reader's lifetime stats: "3 opens · 2 clicks" or "—" if they've never engaged. This gives you a quick way to identify:

• Super fans — high opens and clicks across many campaigns
• Clickers but not openers — rare, but possible if MPP inflated someone else's opens
• Zero engagement — never opened, never clicked. These are candidates for a re-engagement campaign or list cleanup.

The Avg Open Rate stat

The Avg Open Rate card on your overview shows the percentage of active subscribers who have opened at least one of your emails. This is a lifetime engagement metric, not an average of per-campaign open rates.

It's calculated as: (subscribers with ≥1 open) ÷ (total active subscribers) × 100.

A healthy Avg Open Rate for an author list is typically 30–50%+ — many of your readers should have engaged at some point.

Using engagement for segmentation

Engagement data is most powerful when combined with segments. Here are practical ways to use it:

Re-engagement campaign

Create a segment of subscribers with the Never opened engagement filter. Send them a special email: a personal note, an exclusive excerpt, or an incentive to stay. Readers who engage move out of the dormant category. Those who don't after 2–3 re-engagement emails are probably safe to remove from your list — a smaller, engaged list outperforms a large, disengaged one.

VIP or launch team

Create a segment with Has clicked — these are your most engaged readers. They're the best candidates for ARC invitations, cover reveal reveals, and advance preorder announcements.

Warm list campaign

Before a new release, send a "warm up" email to your Active last 30d segment — readers who have recently engaged. This primes your most responsive readers right before you ask them to buy or review.

Keeping your list healthy

A healthy list is more valuable than a large list. Tips:

• Email regularly — at minimum once a month. Infrequent senders get forgotten.
• Prune unengaged subscribers — after a re-engagement campaign, consider removing subscribers who have never opened or clicked in 12+ months. Smaller lists with better open rates have better deliverability.
• Watch your bounce rate — a high hard bounce rate (above 2%) signals list quality issues. Stop importing unverified addresses.
• Track unsubscribes per campaign — a spike in unsubscribes after a particular send is feedback that the content or frequency wasn't right for that audience.