This can be caused by a number of different factors, but it is difficult for us to determine. For instance, some ESPs will only count emails with images downloaded as “opened,” but others will also mark an email as opened if any links are clicked. Different methods of tracking can cause disparity in results.
Because we do not offer the ability to remove bot opens, firmware scans, or other security system automated clicks/opens that may pre scan an email prior to it landing in an inbox, you may see extra, duplicate or even multiple opens in an analytics report. Depending on how many levels of security one may have, an email may be scanned multiple times via different security systems prior to reaching an inbox causing multiple opens or opens at different geographic locations on different IP addresses. If you are sending an email to a business or same email domain, your emails may be routed to an IP address/ server first for these security scans before a user can open the email on a different device elsewhere.
If you added a merge tag to your campaign you can download a CSV file containing a subscriber level report to help show you this data and depict what may have happened. Without a merge tag we have no way of tracking unique subscriber data to help you pinpoint what may have happened.
To learn more about merge tags and our subscriber level reports you can click here to read an article from our blog about Advanced Analytics.
Note: When using our Email Analytics, we highly recommend selecting a merge tag for the most accurate results. Without a merge tag, we cannot track unique ID’s for subscribers and instead rely on the IP address. This can result in unique customers being identified as one customer because they are on the same IP address.