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Flowforth tracks your email performance in real-time, helping you understand how your audience is engaging with each message.

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Accessing Email Metrics

After sending an email, click on it from your Emails list to view the post-send page. You’ll see these tabs:
  • Details - Metrics overview, opens chart, and link clicks
  • Recipients - Full list of recipients with their delivery status
  • Registrations - Who signed up for a Planning Center registration you linked (only shown for emails sent to Planning Center audiences that link to a Church Center registration — see Registration Stats)
  • Content - Preview of the email as it was sent

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When Metrics Update

Email metrics are refreshed every 5 minutes.
  • When you first send an email, you may see dashes (—) or “Calculating…” - that’s normal
  • Give it a few minutes for recipients to open, click, or respond
  • The Last updated timestamp shows when metrics were last refreshed
If a sent email would skew your organization’s dashboard totals, you can hide it from global metrics without losing this page’s stats. See Archiving Emails vs. Hiding from Global Metrics.

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Overview Metrics

Email metrics showing Open Rate, Unsubscribe Rate, Bounce Rate, and Complaint Rate
The Details tab shows four key metrics at a glance:

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Open Rate

The percentage of sent emails that were opened.
  • Green (> 25%): Excellent engagement
  • Yellow (15-25%): Average engagement
  • Red (< 15%): Below average
Open rates can be inflated or blocked by privacy features (like Apple Mail Privacy Protection). Use this as a general indicator, not an exact count.

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Unsubscribe Rate

The percentage of sent emails whose recipient clicked unsubscribe or updated their preferences.
  • Green (< 0.2%): Healthy
  • Yellow (0.2-0.5%): Monitor closely
  • Red (> 0.5%): Review your content and targeting

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Bounce Rate

The percentage of emails that could not be delivered.
  • Green (< 0.5%): Normal
  • Yellow (0.5-1%): Some list hygiene needed
  • Red (> 1%): Clean your email list

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Complaint Rate

The percentage of sent emails that were reported as spam.
  • Green (< 0.01%): Excellent
  • Yellow (0.01-0.05%): Acceptable
  • Red (> 0.05%): Serious concern - review your practices
High complaint rates can damage your sender reputation and affect deliverability for future emails. If you see red here, review your sending practices immediately.
Some email providers, like Gmail, do not report complaints back to senders. Your actual complaint rate may be higher than what is shown.

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Opens Over Time Chart

Opens Over Time chart showing email opens declining over a week
The Opens Over Time chart shows how opens accumulated after sending. This helps you understand:
  • How quickly recipients engage with your emails
  • Peak engagement times
  • The “long tail” of opens over days/weeks
Flowforth uses your sending domain for tracking links, so the URLs in your email match your from address. This helps with deliverability since email providers trust emails where the links and sender are consistent. You can toggle open and click tracking on or off per domain in your domain settings.
Link Clicks table showing each link URL with click count and percentage
The Link Clicks section shows:
  • Total clicks across all links in the email
  • A breakdown table with:
    • Each unique link URL
    • Number of clicks for that link
    • Percentage of total clicks

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Who Clicked What

Click on any link in the table to see which recipients clicked that specific link. This modal shows:
  • Recipient name
  • Email address
  • Click timestamp
This is useful for following up with people who showed interest in specific content.

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Recipients Tab

The Recipients tab shows a searchable, filterable table of all recipients. You can:
  • Search by name or email
  • Filter by delivery status
  • Export recipients to CSV (sent to your email)

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Recipient Statuses

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Did Not Send

The “Did Not Send” status means the person was on your list but was filtered out before sending. Common reasons include:
  • They are unsubscribed from your organization’s emails or from the email’s category
  • They don’t have a valid email address on file
  • Someone else on the list has the same email address (duplicates are filtered so only one copy is sent per address)
  • Their email address contains “no-reply” or “noreply”
Did Not Send recipients are hidden from the Recipients tab by default. To view them, add the Did Not Send Recipients filter and choose:
  • Show — list them alongside all other recipients
  • Show Only — list only the recipients that did not send
  • Hide — leave them out (the default)
You can also set the Status filter to Did Not Send. Searching the Recipients tab always includes Did Not Send recipients, so you can find anyone by name or email without changing filters. These records do not count against your email usage. For more help, see Why Didn’t Someone Receive My Email?.

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Per-Recipient Event Timeline

A timeline of an individual recipient's email events, including opens and link clicks
Click a recipient’s status badge to open a timeline of everything that happened with their copy of the email. The timeline shows each event in order, including every time they opened the email and which links they clicked. This is a quick way to understand how an individual engaged with a specific email. It’s also a helpful tool for troubleshooting deliverability issues. If someone says they didn’t get an email, the timeline shows whether it was delivered, bounced, or marked as spam — and when — so you can pinpoint where things went wrong for that specific person.

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Filtering by Status

Click on any of the four metric cards (Open Rate, Unsubscribe Rate, etc.) to automatically filter the Recipients tab to show only recipients with that status.

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Exporting Recipients

Click the Export button on the Recipients tab to download a CSV of all recipients. The export includes:
  • Name
  • Email address
  • Delivery status
  • Timestamps
You’ll receive an email with a download link when the export is ready. The link expires after 7 days.

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Understanding Your Metrics

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What’s a Good Open Rate?

Churches and religious organizations tend to have some of the highest open rates of any industry, often averaging 40-60%. This is because church audiences are highly engaged and have actively opted in to receive communications.
  • 40%+ is typical for churches
  • 25-40% may indicate room for improvement
  • Below 25% may indicate deliverability issues or content that isn’t resonating
Apple Mail Privacy Protection can inflate open rates by automatically preloading email content, even when the recipient doesn’t actually open the email. Keep this in mind when evaluating your numbers.

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Improving Your Metrics

  • Write better subject lines - Keep them short, specific, and relevant. “This Sunday: Guest Speaker + Potluck” performs better than “Weekly Update.” Use the @first-name merge tag to personalize when it makes sense.
  • Send at the right time - Test different days and times. Many churches find mid-week mornings work well for newsletters, while time-sensitive announcements should go out as soon as possible.
  • Send consistently - Pick a schedule and stick to it. People expect and look for emails that arrive on a regular cadence. Inconsistent sending can lead to lower engagement or higher unsubscribes when emails do arrive.
  • Use categories effectively - Let people subscribe to the types of emails they care about (e.g., Kids Ministry, Students, General). Targeted emails get better engagement than sending everything to everyone.
  • Keep your lists clean - Review bounced addresses periodically and make sure your Planning Center lists are up to date. Sending to invalid addresses hurts your sender reputation.
  • Make it scannable - Use headings, short paragraphs, and clear calls to action. People skim emails, so put the most important information first.
  • Keep it relevant - If more than half of your email doesn’t apply to the reader, they’ll stop reading your emails altogether. Send targeted emails to specific lists rather than putting everything into one email for everyone. A Kids Ministry parent doesn’t need to read about the Men’s Retreat, and vice versa.
  • Include a clear call to action - Every email should have something for the reader to do, whether it’s registering for an event, watching a video, or just knowing about a schedule change.
If you have questions about interpreting your stats or want help improving performance, reach out to support@flowforth.co.