How Do You Track Email Opens?


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Knowing who opened the email you sent might be important for some people, more precisely for major companies because track email opens is an important marketing strategy.

This way, these companies establish how many people open these emails and what type of email suits best their marketing campaign. These emails are sometimes regarded by people as spam, but they are a valuable asset to spread information.

How to track email opens in HTML

Email open tracking is quite simple as you only need to introduce a small 1×1 pixel .GIF in an HTML email right at the email message?s bottom.

This tiny image is called a ?tracker image? or a ?web beacon? but most users usually refrain themselves from using 1×1 .GIFs due to the fact that many anti-virus programs automatically block such images because they are developed to spot a web beacon.

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?How do you know if track email opens was successful?

When users open the email sent by a major company, the web beacon is downloaded from the company?s server, and this is how they are notified that their email has just been opened.

There is a controversy on how challenging it is to track email opens and some people claim that this email has to be an HTML one otherwise, it is impossible. However, this cannot be regarded as a general rule as it depends on a wide variety of factors.

Can you tackle the track email opens strategy?

For instance, Gmail has a default feature that disables the tracker images or any images which are in emails sent by companies, people, or marketing agencies which are not part of your trusted sender list.

The only possible method of tracking these emails with disabled images is to track the ?clicks? people press while checking those emails. This way, the sender can determine whether these users are interested in the company?s email and if the marketing strategy has paid off.

To sum up, the track email opens can be a tricky concept and an important tool to make your brand popular.

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