If you are including advertisements in your messages, it's a good idea to periodically review how those ads are being received. If you're paid to advertise for other organizations/businesses in your messages...it's imperative that you do!
To help you with this, Mailing Summary Reports (MSR) -- a collection of high-level metrics from your mailings -- has two reports that will help you analyze how effective they are.
- The Advertisements Summary provides data that you can use to keep your advertising relationships productive.
- Mailings With Ads is a great resource for seeing how well your messages with advertisements are performing with regards to opens and clicks.
NOTE: References to Message Summary Reports reflect a current rebranding initiative. Message Summary Reports and Mailing Summary Reports refer to the same set of reports with the same options and functionality.
TIP: There is an additional, brief, advertisement-centric report (accessible on the Advertising list page) that focuses on high-level information, such as:
- the date and time that the ad was clicked,
- the message the ad was in when it was clicked, and
- the email address of anyone who clicked the ad.
This report is discussed later in this article in Advertising Report.
All of these reports are ideal for internal reviews of your advertising successes and weak spots so that you can adapt your practices if necessary.
Access the Message Summary Reports
- Classic admin interface: Navigate to Mailings > Reports > Mailing Summary Reports.
- New Admin Experience: Navigate to Messages > Reports > Message Summary Reports.
- Set any filters you want to apply in the Filter Messages panel and click Update Results.
- Click the View Reports tab.
- Click the plus sign (+) next to Advertisements in the Reports panel.
Click Summary or Mailings with Ads to have the report data populate the section to the right. Refer to the sections that follow for information on these two reports.
Management options
The following table describes the list-management options that are available above the report results.
TIP: Click a column header to sort on that column; click again to reverse the sort order.
| Option | Click to... |
|---|---|
| Search | Open a report-specific popup. Click the dropdowns to select your criteria and click Find. |
| Reset | Clear any search criteria that you have applied and restore the original list. |
| Columns | Open the column-chooser popup. Add and remove columns; drag to reposition them; click Ok to save and exit. |
| Export | Export the top-most 5,000 rows of the report into Microsoft Excel. Refer to Export & Share the reports, below. NOTE: If the report exceeds 5,000 rows, the system displays a popup message with an Email the file button. Click the button to receive an email with the password-protected file. In the next popup, note the password. |
Summary report
This report is advertisement-centric; it summarizes each advertisement (e.g., clicks, number of mailings) as a unique row in a list. At a glance, you can quickly see how your ads are performing overall.
The initial view shows a list of advertisements, along with their click and message statistics.
- Click the plus sign (+) next to the name of an ad to expand the row and see which messages the ad was in and how it performed in each of those messages.
NOTE: If an ad is inserted in multiple messages, all of those messages will be listed when the row is expanded.
- Click the Columns buttons above the list to access the column selector dialog where you can add and remove columns.
- You can Remove all, Add all, or use the - and + signs to select individual columns for your report.
Mailings with Ads report
This report is message-centric; it provides data about each mailing as a unique row in a list. At a glance, you can quickly see how your messages that contained ads are performing.
- Click the Columns buttons above the list to access the column selector dialog where you can add and remove columns.
Advertising Report
This brief report is advertisement-centric and focuses on:
- the date and time that the ad was clicked,
- the message the ad was in when it was clicked, and
- the email address of anyone who clicked the ad.
To access the Advertising Report:
- Navigate to the Advertising page.
- Hover on the menu next to an ad and select Report.
The popup displays the three metrics mentioned above.
Export & Share the reports
Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) has made it easy to get these advertising data to your colleagues (for review and analysis) and to your sponsors (for fiscal reasons).
To export a report (all three reports):
- Click the Export button above the list.
- When prompted, click Download Excel File.
- Navigate to where you want to store the report file, give it a memorable name, and click Save.
TIP: Navigate to the saved file and review it.
NOTE: Best practices indicate giving each export file a unique name because the default file name for these three reports is InformzReport_<series of numerals>.xls.
NOTE: The report file that is generated from the Advertisement Summary report includes only the top-level (Advertisement) row of that report; it does not include the "hidden" rows. If you want the message-level data, export the Mailings with Ads report.