--- title: "How to Read Campaign Analytics in FirstSales | FirstSales" description: "Read the Engagement strip, Sender Health, and per-contact journey — and know why reply rate beats open rate for judging a cold campaign." canonical: "https://firstsales.io/tutorial/read-campaign-analytics/" --- [Home](/)/[Tutorials](/tutorial/)/How to Read Campaign Analytics in FirstSales Analytics # How to Read Campaign Analytics in FirstSales Read the Engagement strip, Sender Health, and per-contact journey — and know why reply rate beats open rate for judging a cold campaign. 8 min read·Beginner·6 steps 1. 1 ## Where the numbers live Open a campaign and go to its **Analytics** tab. The **Engagement** strip is the at-a-glance scoreboard: **Sent** and **Delivered** as counts, plus **Open Rate, Click Rate, Reply Rate,** and **Bounce Rate** as percentages. Everything below drills into those numbers. ![Where the numbers live](/tutorials/analytics-01-engagement-strip.webp) 2. 2 ## Reply rate is the metric that matters For cold outreach, **reply rate** — especially **positive replies** — is the real signal. Opens tell you the subject line worked; replies tell you the offer worked. Judge a campaign on replies and meetings booked, not opens. A healthy cold campaign lands roughly in the low single digits on positive reply rate; if you're at zero after a few hundred sends, the problem is targeting or offer, not volume. 3. 3 ## Treat open rate with suspicion Open rate is a **soft metric**. Apple Mail Privacy Protection and other prefetchers auto-open emails, inflating the number — an open may not be a human. Use open rate as a rough directional read on subject lines and warm-up, never as your success metric. If opens look great but replies are flat, that's the tell: people see it, the message isn't landing. 4. 4 ## Watch Bounce Rate and Sender Health Two numbers protect your sending reputation: * **Bounce Rate** — keep it under **5%** (ideally under 2%). Past 5% the app flags "High bounce rate." * **Sender Health** — each mailbox is graded; a red flag appears at bounce over 5% or warm-up score under 50. A red here is a stop-and-fix signal: pause, clean the list or warm the mailbox, then resume. Sending through it drags every future email toward spam. 5. 5 ## Follow the funnel and per-contact journey Below the strip, the funnel shows drop-off stage by stage (delivered, opened, replied), so you can see _where_ people fall off. Click into a contact to see its **journey** — every step sent, opens, replies, and bounce/skip reasons on a timeline. The journey view is where you diagnose a single stuck or bounced contact; the funnel is where you spot a systemic drop-off across the whole list. 6. 6 ## Compare A/B variants If the campaign runs A/B step variants, analytics breaks results out **per variant** so you can see which subject or body wins on reply rate. Let a variant accumulate enough sends before calling it — a handful of replies isn't a verdict. Winner selection is manual: review the metrics yourself, then edit or delete the underperforming variant. ## Pro tips Hard-won shortcuts that keep warm-up on track. 1 ### Optimize for replies, not opens Opens are inflated by privacy prefetch. Positive reply rate and meetings booked are the only numbers worth steering a campaign by. 2 ### A red Sender Health dot beats any vanity metric Bounce over 5% or warm-up under 50 will sink deliverability regardless of how good opens look. Fix the red before you scale volume. 3 ### Use the funnel to find the leak Great delivery, poor replies = message problem. Poor delivery = list/deliverability problem. The funnel tells you which one before you start guessing. 4 ### Give A/B variants time A variant needs enough sends for its reply rate to mean anything. Declaring a winner on a dozen sends is noise, not a result. ## Frequently asked questions Where do I see campaign analytics? On the campaign's **Analytics** tab. The **Engagement** strip shows Sent and Delivered as counts, plus Open Rate, Click Rate, Reply Rate, and Bounce Rate as percentages; below it are the funnel, Sender Health, and per-contact journeys. Which metric should I judge a cold campaign on? **Positive reply rate** and **meetings booked**. Opens are inflated by privacy prefetch and don't confirm a human read the email — replies do. Why is my open rate so high but replies low? Open rate is soft — Apple Mail Privacy Protection and other prefetchers auto-open emails, inflating it. High opens with flat replies usually means the message or offer isn't landing, not that opens are 'working'. What bounce rate is acceptable? Under **5%**, ideally under 2%. Past 5% the app flags 'High bounce rate' and Sender Health turns red, which hurts deliverability for every future send. What does Sender Health show? A per-mailbox grade combining bounce rate and warm-up score. A red 'Health issues' flag appears when bounce exceeds 5% or the warm-up score drops below 50 — treat it as a stop-and-fix signal. How do I diagnose a single stuck contact? Click into the contact to open its **journey** — a timeline of every step sent, opens, replies, and any bounce or skip reason. That's where you see exactly what happened to one person. Can I compare A/B variants here? Yes. When a step has A/B variants, analytics breaks results out per variant so you can compare reply rates. Give each enough sends before judging — winner selection is manual, so review the metrics yourself and edit or delete the underperformer. ## Ready to put this into practice? Start your FirstSales trial and launch a warmed, authenticated mailbox in minutes. [Start for $1](https://app.firstsales.io) [All tutorials](/tutorial/)