Definition
A view-through conversion records a purchase or desired action that occurs after a subscriber has viewed an email but without clicking any link within it. The subscriber sees the email, perhaps reads the subject line or scans the preview, and later visits the website directly, searches for the brand or clicks a retargeting ad to complete the purchase.
Standard click-based attribution would give this conversion zero credit to the email campaign. View-through attribution acknowledges that email can influence behaviour even when no click is recorded. This is particularly relevant in an environment where approximately 55 to 60 percent of mobile email opens are triggered by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, meaning many subscribers may see emails without traditional engagement tracking capturing the event.
When View-Through Is Most Relevant
- Brand-awareness campaigns where the goal is mental availability, not immediate clicks
- High-consideration purchases where subscribers research before buying
- Retargeting programmes where email primes the subscriber and a later ad closes the sale
Best Practices
- Use view-through attribution to understand email's full influence, but do not rely on it alone for optimisation — click-based data is more directly actionable
- Set a reasonable attribution window for view-through conversions, typically 24 to 72 hours
- Compare view-through data against control groups to isolate the true incremental lift of email exposure
Related Glossary Terms
A/B Testing
A/B testing in email marketing is the practice of sending two variations of an email to a small sample of your list to determine which version performs better before sending the winner to the remaining subscribers.
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is a metric that measures the average revenue generated per email subscriber over a specific period, used to evaluate list value and campaign effectiveness.
Attention Rate
Attention rate is the percentage of email opens that last longer than 5 seconds, distinguishing genuine reads from passive opens, preview-pane views, or Apple MPP auto-loads.
Bounce Rate
Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that were rejected by the receiving server before reaching the recipient. It is a key indicator of list health and data quality.
Campaign Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
Campaign IRR is the annualised return rate earned by an email campaign, accounting for the timing and magnitude of costs and revenue across the campaign's full lifecycle.
Campaign Lifted Revenue
Campaign lifted revenue is the additional revenue generated by an email campaign beyond what would have occurred without it, measured via a holdout group or statistical lift analysis.