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Confused about why the numbers for emails sent and replied emails don’t match up? We’ve got you covered. Let’s break down what each metric means and why they might differ.

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Emails sent

  • What it is: an email sent includes any email you send out, new or as a part of an ongoing thread.
  • Tracked in your dataset as: SENT in the action_type field.

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Emails replied

  • What it is: an email you’ve received and then responded to.
  • Tracked in your dataset as: true (replied) or false (not replied) on the is_replied field.

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Why do these numbers differ?

The key reason for the difference lies in how timestamps are assigned:
  • Email sent: the timestamp corresponds to when the email was actually sent.
  • Replied email: the timestamp is linked to the initially received email that was replied to, not the time of the reply.
This difference becomes more noticeable over short time periods. For instance, if you reply today to an email received a week ago, the ‘Email Sent’ will be counted under today’s metrics, but the ‘Replied Email’ will be counted under the metrics for the week when the original email was received.

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Example

Imagine that client sends an email on September 1st, and that email is replied on September 10th. Filtering for different time periods, the numbers will be different:
Filtered time periodReceived EmailsEmails SentReplied Emails
September 1st101
September 10th010
September 1st to September 10th111

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When to use each metric

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Productivity tracking

If your goal is to gauge your team’s productivity over a specific period, focus on the emails sent metric. It reflects the active communication efforts made by your team during that period.

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Inbound workload management

To understand how many incoming emails from a certain period were addressed, use the replied emails metric. This helps in understanding the responsiveness to the inbound workload received during that period.
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