About JonathanMandell

I am sorry for the frustration this has caused you and everyone that wants an accurate report to understand whether their customers are opening emails.  The earlier comments about the tracking pixel are correct.  The way Constant Contact and all other email companies track if an email has been opened is by having this invisible image displayed to the recipient.  If their email program blocks images or if they choose not to display them then we do not count it as an open in our opens report.  Additionally, this will be counted as a did-not-open when we release our did not opens report.   This is my challenge.  I want to be as accurate as possible in the information I show you.  But I don't want to confuse or mislead anyone.  The customers I have met with have told me that what is most important is to know who is not opening so they can remove them from their list.  The two best methods that customers have come up with to ensure that their list contains people that are still interested in hearing from them are:   1.  Ensure that you have links in your email since those are always tracked.  In fact if a link is clicked we will automatically count that as an open as well regardless if they are displaying images.   2.  Send a "are you still interested" email.  Send this either to your whole list or if you have a list of customers that are not opening emails (using the method at the start of this post - and eventually using the did not opens report).   Please feel free to contact me with any questions that you might have.  I will continue to listen to you needs and try to build the best solution possible to meet those needs.   Thank you, Jonathan  ... View more

Hi Tom,   We have been working hard on these reports and I would love to show you the progress we have made.  Would you be willing to chat about this next week sometime?   Thanks, Jonathan ... View more

For anyone interested I will be holding a webinar next Tuesday from 4-5 EST where I will walk though some new reporting concepts.  You have all been great at giving me some valuable feedback, so I would love it if you could join me.  There are only 15 spots open so please register.    http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=v58u9ghab&oeidk=a07e5sn5rmreea09af6   Thank you so much, Jonathan  ... View more

Thanks for that work around Dennis while we continue to work on a Did Not Opens report.  I want to also reiterate that someone that opens your email and is not displaying images in their email program will not be counted as an open unless they click on a link.  This is how every email company tracks opens.  So, it is possible to have people that will tell you they opened and read your email but they still appear as if they did not.  This is why we do not recommend removing everyone that appears as having not read your email.   Over the course of several email campaigns you can assume that those people that have images turned off will always have them off and those that have them on will always have them on, so you can track the improvement in open rate over time.    Thanks, Jonathan ... View more

Thank you both Bryon and Andrew for sharing your work arounds with the community.  I will continue to look into the issues you have brought up and will post more info every week or two here as I have more to share.  In the meantime I am collecting all these best practices for working with our products.  My goal is to find a way to share this info with all of our customers since I am certain that many will benefit.   ... View more

I understand and am very sorry for your frustration, Sam.  But the best I can do for you and all our customers is to be honest in the date when we will have this feature.  There is also a workaround in place that I am more than willing to improve on if you have any suggestions.  If this solution is not acceptable to you and you would prefer to take your business elsewhere then I understand.   Constant Contact's commitment to understanding the needs of small businesses and nonprofits and delivering products that lead to their success was the most important deciding factor in my choice to come work here.   In the three months since I have started, I have been reassured each day of everyone's commitment to this mission – from the brilliant engineers I work with to the empathetic sales and support staff that I overhear each day delivering an outstanding experience to everyone that contacts us.   I recognize that we have fallen short on some of the features of the products, and we are working hard to improve those. However, I am certain that when you evaluate the entire package of what we offer compared to others, I am certain that you could not have a better partner than Constant Contact who is dedicated to making you successful.   I will get off my soapbox now.. thank you for listening (err... reading). :smileyhappy: ... View more

Thanks again Tom for the great info!  There is certainly something wrong (in my opinion) with how the export of data works since I would not have expected that the unsubscribe date would overwrite the date the contact was added.  I would expect both fields to be available.  So I am looking into what can be done to fix this sooner.   In the meantime, that date is stored in the Contacts -> Removed Contacts and pulling up an individual contact shows the date that they were added, last updated, and removed date.  I know this is certainly not a great solution since it would take a lot of time to go through all your removed contacts but you could at least get a sample. ... View more

Thanks Tom,   This is the exact kind of information I am looking for. :smileyhappy: In the years I have spent with small businesses I have learned to value your time above all else and if I am going to deliver information then I want it to lead to an action that creates more business for you or saves you time.     I can say that your 1st ask for the history of a customer's interaction beyond 90 days is due around the same time as the did not opens report.  Again this is all due to how we store and retrieve information which is being greatly improved.  As for your 2nd ask I will look into it and see what is happening.   Please keep the suggestions coming and the more details about how you are using the information the better!   --Jonathan ... View more

UPDATED: October 2018   We have recently added the Contacts Segments tool that allows you to create a list of contacts that did not open any of your last 5 emails, a specific email, or any email. Please click here to learn more about using our Segments feature.   The information below is out of date. ----- Hello All, I am the new product manager for customer facing reporting and analytics.  I am aware how large of a pain point this topic is. We are addressing this and will have a solution in mid 2012.  We will be implementing new technology that will allow us to track "did not opens" as well as several other highly requested items.   I apologize for the length of time that this will take, but we are working on it.  In the meantime we have this workaround which is the best way to know who didn't open an email.  I feel it is important to understand the way that we know if one of your contacts has opened an email is by tracking the display of a very small transparent image embedded in the email.  This means that if your recipient has "block images" enabled we will not acknowledge that they opened the email unless they click on a link in your message.  This is the industry standard method for tracking emails.   Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how we can improve the workaround until we are able to release the new feature. ... View more