This article explains how Snov.io's open tracking works, how to enable or disable it in your email campaigns, and how to monitor the open statistics.
TL; DR
Snov.io recommends using open tracking only when it's necessary in specific campaigns. For all other campaigns, it's best to turn open tracking off. It can hurt your deliverability, trigger spam filters and "suspicious" banners. Instead of email opens, track more reliable and actionable metrics like reply rates.
How open tracking affects deliverability
How to reduce the risks of using open tracking
How to enable/disable open tracking
Open tracking can be a helpful tool in email campaigns. When enabled, it allows you to:
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Create sequences using the “email opened” condition to trigger follow-ups based on prospect behavior
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Monitor open rates in the Reports dashboard or export lists of recipients who opened your emails
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Receive real-time notifications when a recipient opens your email
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Run A/B tests on subject lines and intro sentences to optimize performance
However, open tracking also has potential risks:
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It can hurt your email deliverability
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Some email providers may display “suspicious” warnings to recipients
How open tracking works in Snov.io
Snov.io uses a proprietary tracking technology called Magic pixel — a tiny, pixel-sized image inserted in emails to detect when they are opened. It’s designed to be more email-friendly than standard tracking pixels.
How open tracking affects your campaigns
Tracking with Magic pixel helps minimize spam warnings compared to other tools. However, no method can guarantee complete invisibility from spam filters.
Open tracking can affect both your email deliverability and how trustworthy your emails appear to recipients. In some cases, it may cause your email to be flagged as suspicious.
Email providers may detect the pixel and display banners to recipients (like "This message seems suspicious" banner in Gmail) or even send your emails into the spam folder. This is a common risk with tracking.
To minimize potential risks, use open tracking only when it’s necessary for specific campaigns. Our data shows that campaigns without it tend to have better deliverability and higher reply rates.
How to reduce the risks of using open tracking
Deliverability depends more on following best practices than on using tracking.
You should enable tracking only if you have a strong sender reputation, quality email content and reasonable sending volume.
Follow these best practices consistently to minimize the risks.
1) Set up a custom tracking domain
By default, tracking uses a shared domain, meaning your deliverability can be affected by the sending practices of other users.
Adding a custom tracking domain to your email account allows your own domain (or subdomain) to be used for tracking opens and clicks. Using a subdomain of your main sender domain helps reduce the negative impact of tracking. Learn how to set it up in our article.
2) Set up proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) on your domain
These protocols prove that your emails are legitimate and help prevent them from being flagged as spam or rejected by mail servers.
Our deliverability tests can verify every DNS record and provide instructions on how to update the domain parameters that have issues.
3) Monitor your deliverability
Run deliverability tests to check your sending setup and catch potential issues before they affect your campaigns.
These tests evaluate your domain health and detect common problems such as blacklisting, spammy language, or a poor sender IP reputation. You'll also receive personalized recommendations to help resolve them.
4) Focus on reply rates as your main KPI
Replies are a much more accurate metric for measuring lead interest.
Snov.io tracks replies for emails and messages sent through LinkedIn Automation. Plus, our Sentiment analysis automatically detects the interest level of each reply.
Monitor the reply rate on the statistics dashboard for campaigns and the general Reports dashboard. You can also use the integration with Calendly to track booked meetings.
5) Keep in mind that open rates may be inflated
While open rates can offer a general sense of engagement, they are not a reliable metric on their own.
Some email apps and spam filters automatically scan emails, which can trigger false opens before the message even reaches the inbox.
6) Improve your sender reputation
Having a good sender reputation is crucial now—your emails are less likely to be flagged if your reputation is strong. Email warm-up can help you gain a good sender score or restore a damaged reputation.
7) Send multichannel campaigns
Email isn’t the only outreach channel. Combine email with LinkedIn actions to create additional touchpoints and have an additional way to communicate your value to prospects.
How to enable or disable open tracking
By default, open and click tracking are disabled in all new campaigns.
To enable or disable open tracking, pause your campaign and go to Edit mode.
Go to Step 3: Sending options. In the Tracking settings, check or uncheck the Track opens.
You can also enable tracking for individual emails sent from a prospect's profile.
How to monitor open rate
You can track the total open rate and the number of email opens in your campaign's statistics. To view this data, open the campaign from the campaign list and go to the Statistics tab.
Check the Email opens metric: it shows the percentage and the number of recipients who opened your email at least once during the selected time period (adjust it on the right).
How open rate is calculated:
The total open rate only includes unique opens. Multiple opens from the same recipient are not considered in the open rate metric.
When a recipient opens your email, this action is also recorded in the Email opens column on the Recipients tab. To get a list of recipients who have opened your emails, use the Filter menu on the right.
If you need assistance with something not covered in this article, please contact us at help@snov.io or through our live support chat.
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