Details
The system will identify that a contact has opened an email, when either:
- Images within the email are viewed or downloaded (even within the preview pane of the email client, eg. Outlook); or
- When a link within the email is clicked
Many email clients (eg. Microsoft Outlook) can be configured to disable (not download) images within received emails, until the contact requests that images be downloaded. If the contact does not enable the display of images and if they do not click on any links, the system would not be able to detect that the contact opened the email.
Other Things To Be Aware Of
- Plain text emails cannot be tracked
- As with all email systems, reporting data will never be accurate is an email is forwarded, or sent to an email distribution list - as tracking links in an email are designed to be unique to a specific, singular contact record.
- If a contact views your email in their email client's 'preview pane', the open will only be tracked if they choose to download images (or if their email client is configured to do so automatically), or if that contact clicks any link within your email
- If a contact checks their email offline, images won't be download and thus, the open is not tracked unless that contact clicks any link within your email
- Some corporate firewalls remove images from emails thus the open can't be tracked unless that contact clicks any link within your email
- Some corporate proxy servers will pre-cache or pre-check links inside an email (to scan for viruses, phishing links, etc), thus triggering a link click against that contact - even if the contact did not view the email, or click any links within it
- If the email client processing the email is not compatible with viewing remotely-hosted images, the images will not load and thus, an open will not be counted against that contact unless that contact clicks any link within your email.
Improving Your Open Rate
- View our tips for improving your open rates
- Double opt-in your contacts
- Review our best practice email design tips