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This page explains the rules that apply across all Global Analytics endpoints. Each endpoint page also has its own per-field breakdown, but the concepts below are the same everywhere — read this once and the individual endpoints make a lot more sense.

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Two kinds of numbers

The fields in an analytics response are not all the same kind of metric. This is the single most important thing to understand, and it’s the usual cause of “the numbers don’t add up”.
  • Raw event counts — sent, opened, replied, bounced, unsubscribed. These count events. They are additive: the value for a date range equals the sum of the per-day values.
  • Unique counts — unique_lead_count, unique_open_count, positive_replied. These count distinct leads over the requested range (COUNT(DISTINCT lead), deduplicated per campaign by email address). They are not additive.
A lead emailed on two different days counts once in a range query, but once in each single-day query. So if you pull each day separately and add them up, the unique counts (and every rate derived from them) come out inflated.
You cannot reconstruct a multi-day range by summing per-day responses. The raw counts will match, but the unique counts and all rates will not. To get an accurate figure for any period, query that period directly rather than summing individual days.

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Date range behaviour

start_date and end_date are inclusive on both ends. Internally the window runs from start_date 00:00:00 to end_date 23:59:59: 
sent_time >= 'start_date 00:00:00' AND sent_time <= 'end_date 23:59:59'
  • Passing the same date for start and end returns that one full day (00:00:00–23:59:59), not an empty result.
  • When a timezone is supplied, the day boundaries are calculated in that timezone; otherwise UTC is used.

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Time axes: send date vs reply date

Every record is anchored to a point in time. Endpoints differ in which timestamp they filter and group by:
  • Send date (sent_time) — the day the email went out. This is the default axis for sent, opened, replied, bounced, and positive replies (see below). The *-by-sent-time endpoints make this explicit.
  • Event date — some day-wise breakdowns bucket opens by open time and replies by reply time, so each metric lands on the day the event happened.
When comparing two endpoints that look similar, check which axis each uses — a reply that arrives days after the send lands on a different day depending on the axis.

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Rate formulas

All rates are percentages computed against the unique counts, not raw sends:
RateFormula
open_rateunique_open_count / unique_lead_count
reply_ratereplied / unique_open_count — falls back to unique_lead_count when open tracking is off (plain-text sends, or tracking disabled)
positive_reply_ratepositive_replied / replied
bounce_ratebounced / unique_lead_count
client_healthpositive_replied / unique_lead_count
bounce_rate is calculated per unique lead (bounced / unique_lead_count), not per email sent. If you want the deliverability-style figure (bounced / sent), the raw bounced and sent counts are both in the response and you can compute it yourself.

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Positive replies

A positive reply is counted as a distinct lead whose category sentiment is positive (lead_categories.sentiment_type = 'positive'), attributed to the send date of that lead’s email. There is no reply-event requirement in the count — it is purely the set of leads currently tagged positive, on the same send-date axis as sent and replied. This is the same definition the single-campaign analytics page uses, so the headline tile, the day-wise positive chart, and the campaign page all reconcile.
Because positives are attributed to send date (not reply-received date), a positive reply that arrives later is counted on the day its email was originally sent — exactly like replied already behaves. Re-categorising a lead (e.g. marking it positive later) will change historical days, since the count reflects the lead’s current category.