• by Ray Schultz , March 29, 2018

SendGrid, provider of a digital communication platform, has enhanced its API so that clients can track their email delivery and engagement data going back 30 days and deal with potential issues.   

The DIY service offers a granular historical view, based on insights from search and filter capabilities, the company says.

“We heard stories that developers would get an email with cryptic concerns about whether email was delivered,” says Steve Sloan, chief product officer at SendGrid. “There might be a single user who didn’t receive the email, or it might be that there weren’t enough responses to the campaign.”

With Email Activity Storage, ”customers can do some quick troubleshooting on their own or we can do it for managed customers,” Sloan continues. “Developer customers can jump in and get the lay of the land very quickly.”

According to SendGrid, users can deal with problems like subject lines, incorrect message configurations or a misunderstanding of the recipient mailbox provider’s algorithm. And they can do all this broadly or on the individual level, it says.

The company cites Return Path research showing that 80% of wanted email reaches its intended recipient.

“Broadly speaking, deliverability keeps getting better,” Sloan says. “But if a person running an email campaign isn’t getting the sort of response she wants, for her it’s the whole world.”

SendGrid has long been able to provide such answers. But marketers can expedite the process by doing it on their own.

“They literally have someone standing at their desk, and they want an answer,” Sloan says. “It’s common for our users to have lots of other people who depend on them.”

SendGrid customers get three days of email activity history with any account on SendGrid. Essentials and Pro customers can purchase 30 days of additional email activity history.

Clients who have tested the service say they are happy with it.

“These improvements allow us to see which notifications went to which people in the same view with open and click activity, which gives us the ability to audit and determine if necessary communications are happening in real-time,” states Kevin Curry, managing partner and chief technology officer at Comparity.  

SendGrid, a publicly traded company, has been testing the service for three months.