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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
  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.

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