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How can I accurately measure email tracking?
Apple Mail Privacy Protection
Gmail image caching
What do these changes affect on my insights reports?

Email tracking reports with Gmail and Apple

YS
Yssel Salas, July 7, 2023

Our email tracking feature lets companies know if customers are opening their emails. The feature works by adding tracking pixels to emails with tracking enabled, which registers when recipients open emails.

It's important to remember that your customers may have email providers that prevent tracking email opens and link clicks. In 2021, both Apple Mail and Gmail implemented new mail privacy policies to protect their consumers.

In these cases, Pipedrive will not be able to provide any tracking information for those emails and the emails performance reports will not reflect this data.


How can I accurately measure email tracking?

As mentioned above, pixel-based email tracking is only accurate if your customers’ email providers allow it.

So, while email tracking is helpful, there is no way to know if customers are opening your emails in the first place. However, link tracking is not affected by policies or caching, making it one of the most reliable engagement metrics.

You should also focus on reliable and actionable data like deliverability, bounces, unsubscribes and spam reports.

For instance, spam reports and unsubscribe requests may help you identify content irrelevant to your customers or diagnose weaknesses in your campaigns. At the same time, bounces can indicate outdated contact details or other issues with your email lists.

These metrics do not only provide insights into email performance and what resonates with your customers but also help you protect your sender reputation.

You can learn more about Campaigns reporting in this article.


Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is a new set of features that allows users of the Apple Mail app or desktop email app to hide information about when, where, and how they open emails.

The following operating systems have implemented this privacy protection:

  • iOS 15
  • iPadOS 15
  • macOS Monterey
  • watchOS 8

Any users running these operating systems and using the Apple Mail app with MPP turned on will no longer be trackable using pixel images. This applies across Apple’s suite of devices, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.

You can learn more about Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) on this page.


Gmail image caching

Google made a new change to how they display images in Gmail. For security reasons, instead of loading images from an external host server each time someone opens an email, Gmail stores these images locally on its own proxy servers.

Email images download automatically in all Gmail accounts, but users can configure this manually anytime. If your recipients disable the option to download images automatically, the tracking pixel will not download automatically and the open tracking will not count towards your reports.

Google image caching only applies to recipients who access their Gmail through their browser or a Gmail Mobile App, such as what you may find on your Android or iPhone device.

Recipients who access their Gmail through a desktop client (such as Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) will download images as usual and report accordingly.


What do these changes affect on my insights reports?

The fields that are affected are listed below.

Email performance report:

  • Segment by: open tracking
  • Table view: opened time (tracking)
  • Summary view: opened, not opened
  • Filters: open tracking, opened time (tracking)

Campaigns performance report:

  • Open tracking (opened, not opened)
  • Total opens
  • Unique opens
  • Email open time
  • Email open date
  • Recipient country
  • Open rate
  • Geo-location
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