Student CRM uses an email delivery service called Sendgrid. Like many other email delivery services, Sendgrid embeds a tiny, invisible image in an emails, and uses this to track if an email has been opened. When a student reads an email, their client application loads the tracking image which registers the "open" event and feeds it back to Student CRM. 

However, there are many reasons why your email may not register as opened.

Firstly, this method of tracking relies on the student having "view images" switched on. Many email clients have this disabled by default to protect their users. As such there may be occasions where students have received and opened an email but the event cannot be logged.

Secondly, all emails are sent from both an IP and a domain, both of which have a "reputation" score that email clients use to decide if an email is "safe". Your emails are sent from an IP which is unique for every institution. As this is controlled by Sendgrid, it's highly reputable. The domain will be your institution's domain, eg "student-crm.com", and it's reputation will be determined by your staff's activities. 

There are a lot of different calculations email clients uses to determine what is considered safe or unsafe, so there may be times when one email is sent to the spam folder, while another isn't. This, and the "disabled images", may account for why your email reporting can seem skewed.

It's worth noting also, that there may be a case where we detect a click, but not an open. If the email is sent and listed as delivered, we'll generate a fake open report, as it's otherwise impossible for the email to have been clicked on, but not opened.

If you have any further questions, please speak to the CS team.