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Email Clicks

Also known as: Total Email Clicks, Email Link Clicks, Total Clicks (Email), ESP Clicks

AcquisitionmetricE-commerce: Top-of-Funnel & Marketing AcquisitionE-commerce

Total clicks on tracked links in delivered marketing emails, as logged by the email service provider. Counts every click, including repeat clicks by the same recipient.

Business Use Case

1️⃣ CRM marketing reviews clicks by campaign weekly and retires creative that falls below the list average. 2️⃣ Email team sees a sudden click spike with no sessions and reviews bot-filter settings with the ESP. 3️⃣ Lifecycle marketing tests subject lines and CTAs, keeping the variant with more clicks per delivered email.

Business Criticality

High

Journey / Navigation Area

Engagement

Owning Function

Marketing

Scope

Event

Formula

COUNT(click_events) WHERE email_type = 'marketing' AND delivery_status = 'delivered'

Calculation Notes

1️⃣ Source is the ESP click log (redirect-tracked links); site sessions tagged utm_medium=email are a different measure and are not used here. 2️⃣ Include marketing sends only (campaigns, automated flows); exclude transactional, order and shipping notifications. 3️⃣ Exclude clicks flagged as bot or security-scanner prefetch by the ESP, and clicks on unsubscribe and preference-centre links. 4️⃣ Attribute each click to the date it occurred, not the send date; late clicks on older sends count in the period they happen. 5️⃣ Total clicks count repeats; unique clicks count one per recipient per send and must be labelled separately. 6️⃣ Clicks on sends to test or seed lists and internal domains are excluded.

Technical Details

Measure TypeCounter
Aggregation WindowDaily, Weekly, Monthly

Events

SQL Queries

Google Analytics 4 (BigQuery)
-- ==========================================
-- 1. GOOGLE BIGQUERY SQL
-- ==========================================
DECLARE start_date DATE DEFAULT DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 90 DAY);
DECLARE end_date DATE DEFAULT DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 1 DAY);

-- Total ESP-logged clicks per click date (repeats counted), on delivered marketing sends only
SELECT
  DATE(c.click_timestamp) AS click_date,
  COUNT(*) AS email_clicks
FROM `your-project.crm.esp_clicks` AS c
JOIN `your-project.crm.esp_sends` AS s
  ON c.send_id = s.send_id
JOIN `your-project.crm.esp_campaigns` AS cp
  ON s.campaign_id = cp.campaign_id
-- Bucket by the date the click occurred, not the send date
WHERE DATE(c.click_timestamp) BETWEEN start_date AND end_date
  -- Marketing campaigns and automated flows only; transactional, order and shipping mail excluded
  AND cp.email_type = 'marketing'
  AND s.delivery_status = 'delivered'
  -- Bot and security-scanner prefetch clicks flagged by the ESP excluded
  AND COALESCE(c.is_bot_flagged, FALSE) = FALSE
  -- Unsubscribe and preference-centre links excluded
  AND c.link_type NOT IN ('unsubscribe', 'preference_center')
  -- Test and seed lists and internal recipient domains excluded
  AND s.list_type NOT IN ('test', 'seed')
  AND LOWER(s.recipient_domain) NOT IN ('yourcompany.com')
GROUP BY click_date
ORDER BY click_date;
Adobe Experience Platform (AEP Query Service)
-- ==========================================
-- 2. ADOBE AEP QUERY SERVICE SQL
-- ==========================================
-- Relative reporting window: last 90 complete days
WITH params AS (
  SELECT
    CAST(DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE, 90) AS DATE) AS start_date,
    CAST(DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE, 1) AS DATE) AS end_date
)
-- Total ESP-logged clicks per click date (repeats counted), on delivered marketing sends only
SELECT
  CAST(c.click_timestamp AS DATE) AS click_date,
  COUNT(*) AS email_clicks
FROM aep_backend_dataset_esp_clicks AS c
JOIN aep_backend_dataset_esp_sends AS s
  ON c.send_id = s.send_id
JOIN aep_backend_dataset_esp_campaigns AS cp
  ON s.campaign_id = cp.campaign_id
CROSS JOIN params AS p
-- Bucket by the date the click occurred, not the send date
WHERE CAST(c.click_timestamp AS DATE) BETWEEN p.start_date AND p.end_date
  -- Marketing campaigns and automated flows only; transactional, order and shipping mail excluded
  AND cp.email_type = 'marketing'
  AND s.delivery_status = 'delivered'
  -- Bot and security-scanner prefetch clicks flagged by the ESP excluded
  AND COALESCE(c.is_bot_flagged, FALSE) = FALSE
  -- Unsubscribe and preference-centre links excluded
  AND c.link_type NOT IN ('unsubscribe', 'preference_center')
  -- Test and seed lists and internal recipient domains excluded
  AND s.list_type NOT IN ('test', 'seed')
  AND LOWER(s.recipient_domain) NOT IN ('yourcompany.com')
GROUP BY CAST(c.click_timestamp AS DATE)
ORDER BY click_date;

Source Data

CRM

Dependencies

Prerequisite: List the dependencies required for this Metric

Dimensions:

device-category

Report Attributes

Campaign Name Send Date Email Flow / Automation Link URL Audience Segment Device Category

Recommended Reporting Views

Views
Email Marketing PerformanceMarketing Acquisition OverviewCampaign Performance

Segment Eligibility

true

Governance

Data SensitivityInternal

Derived KPIs

Governance

Created bydevyendarm
Created on9/23/2026
Last modified bydevyendarm
Last modified on9/23/2026
Version1.0.0
Validation stateqa passed
StatusPUBLISHED

GitHub

View related Pull Requestcatalog/metrics/email-clicks.yml

Community Discussion