Understand Open and Click Tracking

When sending a campaign, you can choose to enable open and click tracking. Direct Mail uses industry-standard methods to track opens and clicks. This help article explains how tracking works.

Open Tracking

Open tracking works by inserting a small, invisible image (sometimes called a tracking pixel) in the footer of your email. This is done automatically when the campaign is sent, and only if open tracking is enabled. When the recipient opens the email, their email client has to load the image from our servers. Because each image URL is unique, our servers are able to identify which recipient is loading the image and can update the campaign report accordingly.

Some recipients do not allow their email client to download images over the internet. In those cases, a recipient may open and read your email without it ever appearing on your campaign report. However, if they click a link in your email, we are then able to update the campaign report to show that they read the email and clicked the link.

Click Tracking

Click tracking works by changing the URLs of links in your message. When someone clicks the link, their browser navigates first to our servers and then automatically redirects to the original URL. Each URL is unique, so our servers are able to identify which recipient has clicked the link and update the campaign report accordingly.

Some Types of Links Cannot Be Tracked

Only "Webpage" links can be tracked. Clicks on links that are "Email", "Telephone", "SMS", or "Anchor" links cannot be tracked.

How Privacy and Security Measure Affect Tracking

Some of your recipients may use software that affects the accuracy of open and click tracking. This includes software that blocks tracking pixels, URL detonation software, and Apple's Mail Privacy Protection features.

Blocking Tracking Pixels

Some email clients use heuristics to detect and block tracking pixels in an image. If the tracking pixel in your email campaign is blocked, then Direct Mail is not able to know if the email was opened or not (unless the recipient clicks a link in your email).

URL Detonation

Some email security software uses bots to automatically click each link in an email as it is received. The purpose is to prevent the user from clicking a link that may be harmful. These bots are designed to mimic human behavior so that it is difficult for the sender to know if a real human is clicking the link or a bot. Direct Mail employs technology to try and detect "bot" clicks and keep them out of your campaign report. This help keep your campaign report data accurate.

Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Mail Privacy Protection is the name of a feature that comes built-in to Apple’s Mail app on iOS and macOS. The purpose of this feature is to protect the privacy of the recipient. The feature works by automatically "opening" all the email that a recipient receives, even if the recipient never actually opens the email. From the perspective of the sender, it looks like the email was opened, but they can't be sure if it was authentic or not. In addition, images are downloaded via a proxy server that hides the actual geographic location of the recipient (although, in most cases, the proxy server is in the same general vicinity as the recipient).

Mail Privacy Protection reduces the reliability of the “open rate” number in your email campaign report, but the impact will vary depending on how many of your recipients use this feature. In most cases, Direct Mail is able to detect if an “open” is coming from a device with Mail Privacy Protection enabled. This does not mean that Direct Mail can determine if an open is authentic, but simply that the recipient’s email app has the privacy feature enabled. Look for the email client labeled “Apple Device (Mail Privacy Protection)” in the “Summary” and “Recipients” sections of your campaign report. In the “Summary” section of your campaign report, Direct Mail reports an estimated actual open rate, given as a range. This estimate will only appear if there are enough recipients using Mail Privacy Protection to have a material impact on the open rate (greater than or equal to a 1% difference). When determining open rate, Direct Mail considers all of the “email open” events for a given recipient. For example, if a recipient opens your email twice, once from a device using Mail Privacy Protection and once from a device without, Direct Mail will know that the recipient did actually open the email and will factor that information into the estimate.

Remember that the accuracy of the click rate is not affected by these changes and continues to be a high quality signal of how engaged your subscribers are with your content. Consider including more “clickable” content (i.e. links and buttons) in your emails that entices your subscribers to click. Remember that you can turn any image into a link by clicking on it and entering a URL.

Remember that the goal has never been to get the highest open rate, but rather to drive downstream conversions (i.e. sales, sign-ups, leads, etc.). Consider looking to other metrics to evaluate campaign performance:

• Number of clicks
• Number of forwards or social media shares. These appear on your campaign report as clicks on the links titled [forward to a friend url], [twitter share url], etc.
• Number of goal conversions on your website. You can use Direct Mail’s integration with Google Analytics to link up conversions on your website with the email campaign that brought them there.
• Number of unsubscribes (the lower the better)

How to Improve Open and Click Rates

Email open rates can vary depending on many factors. The average open rate for all email marketing campaigns worldwide is 20% to 30%. It's important to interpret open rates correctly. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Open rates rise over time. This is because not everyone checks or opens their email right away.
• It is possible for someone to open your email without it showing up in your campaign report (e.g. due to tracking pixel blocking).
• If your campaign report indicates that a recipient did not open your email, it does not mean that the email went to their spam folder or was undelivered, nor does it mean that you should send it to them again. It is most likely that the recipient received the email but has not opened it (yet).

Some email campaigns can see open rates over 50%. Here are some suggestions for how you can improve your open rates:

Remove Inactive Subscribers

Consider removing (or unsubscribing) people from your list who have gone inactive. Inactive (or "unengaged") means that perhaps they have not opened an email from you in over a year. Your list may be smaller, but you'll be reaching the people who really are interested. Here's how to remove inactive contacts:

The search results will show Contacts that have not opened a campaign from you in the past 12 months. You can remove them in any of the following ways:

• Delete them from your list
• Unsubscribe them (check the "Unsubscribed" box in the inspector)
• Exclude them (check the "Excluded" box in the inspector)
• Move them from your list into different list that you will never send to
• Move them from your list into a blacklist. Note that if you choose this option, they will not receive emails so long as they are on the blacklist, even if they subscribe to your main list again in the future.

Consider Campaign Frequency

Consider the frequency with which you send email newsletters. Each mailing list is different, but you may find that sending to your mailing list too frequently (e.g. multiple times a week) is resulting in "list fatigue". Most lists actually see engagement go down as the frequency of their campaigns goes up. You may get better results if you reduce the number of times you send per month.

Consider Content Length

Consider the length of your emails. Most people devote only a few seconds to skimming each email. You might find better results with shorter emails that have noticeable, impactful headlines and short, catchy subject lines.

Be Mobile-Friendly

Consider a mobile-friendly template. You may want to try using a template in Direct Mail that is more readable on small screens. All of the templates that come built-in to Direct Mail are mobile-friendly (except for some templates listed in the "Legacy" section).

Pick a Good Time to Send

Weekdays are always better than weekends. Beyond that, however, time of day does not seem to have much impact on open rates.

Protect Your Email Reputation

You do not want your email to be routed to the spam folder. By following best practices, you can safeguard your email reputation and help make sure your emails land in the inbox. Learn more about email reputation.

Strategies to Avoid

Here are some strategies that are not effective in improving open rates:

• Breaking your email campaign up into smaller batches (i.e. sending to three groups of 100 instead of 1 group of 300)
• Sending via your own email server instead of e3 Delivery Service or a dedicated server
• Sending the same message over and over again