When a guest calls from London to say they never received their booking confirmation, or a client insists the invoice did not arrive, you need facts, not guesses. SMTP statistics give you a record of what happened to every message your systems sent through Mailpro.
What Mailpro’s SMTP statistics show
- Accepted: the receiving server took the message.
- Delivered: it reached the recipient’s mailbox provider without a bounce.
- Soft bounces: temporary problems, such as a full mailbox or a server that was briefly unavailable. Mailpro retries these.
- Hard bounces: permanent failures, such as an address that does not exist.
- Opens and clicks: engagement, where tracking is enabled.
- Spam complaints: recipients who marked a message as junk.
The SMTP server statistics page describes each report. You can filter by date, recipient or message type.
Using the data: three island scenarios
The missing booking confirmation
Search for the guest’s address. If the message was delivered, ask them to check spam or promotions folders; if it hard-bounced, the address was probably mistyped at booking, a common issue when reservations come by phone. Either way, you can answer in minutes.
A spike in bounces after a system change
A hotel moves to a new property management system and bounces jump. The statistics show the errors started on the day of the switch, pointing to a configuration or DNS authentication problem rather than bad addresses.
Invoices that clients ignore
An accounting firm in St. John’s sees high delivery but low opens on invoice emails. Changing the subject line from “Document” to “Your invoice from [firm name], due 30 June” makes them easier to recognise.
Keep an eye on reputation
High bounce or complaint rates damage your sending reputation and can affect all your email, including marketing campaigns. Clean invalid addresses regularly, use DKIM and SPF, and do not mix promotional content into transactional messages sent to people who have not opted in to marketing, which the Data Protection Act, 2013 treats as a separate purpose. Mailpro’s guide to email bounces explains the causes.
Watch for seasonal patterns
Volume for tourism businesses rises sharply from December to April and around Antigua Sailing Week and Carnival. Compare statistics season by season, and check before the high season starts that authentication and limits are ready for the extra load. After a hurricane or major outage, review the logs for delayed messages that may need resending.
Who should look at the reports
In many Antiguan businesses the person who set up the SMTP connection was a contractor who has since moved on. Make sure someone in-house, for example the front-office manager at a hotel or the operations lead at a shop, knows how to search the logs. A ten-minute walkthrough saves hours the first time a guest says an email never arrived.
Retention of logs
Delivery logs contain personal data. Keep them only as long as you need them for support and records, in line with the retention principle in section 9 of the Data Protection Act, 2013. Mailpro stores them on Swiss infrastructure.
Not yet using an SMTP relay? Start with Mailpro’s SMTP server for Antigua and Barbuda, or learn what SMTP is.