Email Insights? Does anyone else feel this is completely non-intuitive?

I agree with you.  And it's not very intuitive on how to create custom dimensions either.  I actually set up a mentoring session for Email Insights next week.  If the mentor happens to share any helpful links/tutorials (aside from the product docs.), I will post them here for you

a lot of it comes down to what you're looking for and how well your system and/or naming conventions are setup. I've found a lot of value being able to check device, location and email type, quickly with only a few clicks. To do too much more or to get in the weeds it becomes a bit more complicated -- but again, depends what you're looking to do.

The reason this doesn't "feel" like native marketo is because it was an acquisition back in 2016, I believe. It's come along way since then. Have you read through all the support docs on it to find out how to do what you want? Email Insights - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

Curious to hear more of what you're trying to do...

My personal opinion is that the email performance reports should have been enhanced to include the data and visualizations that email insights provides. But that's just me.

Yeah, I basically don't use Email Insights. I can't get the information I need. And it shows raw #s on the dashboard, not open/click rates, so that's useless.

I don't use email insights either, mainly because Marketo's email click metrics are not reliable. Our market uses strong spam filters, and so 70% of our "clicks" are just the spam filters testing out our links.

As a result, we've given up on using "clicks link in email" entirely. We just track "visited web page" with the email's utm tags in our smart campaigns, but those filters aren't available on Email Insights.

Maybe the strategic agreement that Marketo has signed will Google will one day turn into the possibility to use Google 360 as a reporting and dashboarding front end for Marketo...

-Greg

@Valerie Whiting​ completely agree! I definitely recommend creating a smart campaign for each relevant activity you want to score (such as email click, product page visit, click on online ad, contact sales page visit, etc.) so that you can be as specific as you want with the scoring for each. Logging these activities as interesting moments is also helpful so that you can pass the "last interesting moment" information on to the sales team when they receive an MQL alert.

We also score people based on demographics when they enter the system for the first time (role, company size, etc.) so that their lead score is a combination of behavior and demographic characteristics.