How to track email opens in campaigns

This article explains how Snov.io's open tracking works, how to enable it in your email campaigns, and how to monitor the open statistics.

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Open tracking can be useful in email campaigns. With tracking enabled, you can:

• Set up a sequence with "email opened" condition (whether or not the recipient has opened the previous email)
• Monitor the open rate as one of the KPIs on the Reports dashboard
• Get real-time notifications when recipients open your emails

Using it also carries certain risks and downsides:

• Your deliverability may be affected
• Some email providers may show “suspicious” warnings due to their anti-tracking policies

How open tracking works in Snov.io

Snov.io uses a tiny, invisible image (Magic pixel) to detect when an email is opened. It have proved to reduce negative effect of tracking on your emails, compared to standard pixels used by most tools.

Snov.io's tracking method lowers the chance of Gmail showing the “This message might be spam” banner. However, it can’t prevent it completely. This can happen even with advanced tracking methods like ours.

How open tracking affects deliverability

No tracking method can guarantee full invisibility from spam filters.

By default, tracking uses a shared domain, which means your deliverability may be affected by other users' sending practices.

Email providers like Gmail may detect tracking pixels and display warnings such as “This message seems suspicious” or filter emails into spam.

--> Use custom tracking domain

Add a custom tracking domain to your email account. It will be used instead for tracking opens and clicks in your campaigns.

Using the subdomain of your main sender domain for tracking can lower its negative impact.

Custom domain and Gmail warnings:

A custom tracking domain helps improve deliverability and reduce the risk of spam filters, but it doesn’t make tracking invisible.
While it strengthens your sender reputation, it can’t fully prevent email providers from flagging your email based on other factors.

--> Set up proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) on your domain

To check your domain health, fix other common issues and optimize your email content, do regular deliverability tests. Besides results, you get personalized recommendations on how to improve them.

--> Focus on reply rates as the main engagement metric

Some email apps and spam filters can trigger false opens. This happens when they scan incoming emails before they reach the inbox, which may inflate your open rate.

To get a clearer picture of your campaign performance, focus on more reliable metrics:

• Monitor reply rates in your campaign statistics and Reports.

• Use Sentiment analysis to automatically detect the interest level of each reply.

How to enable open tracking

You can enable tracking for emails sent through Snov.io campaigns or for individual emails sent from a prospect's profile.

To enable open tracking in campaigns, go to Step 3 of the campaign creation process (Sending options). In the Tracking settings, check the Track opens option. You can also enable or disable open tracking for active campaigns.

Pause the campaign, go to Edit mode, and update the tracking settings.

We recommend using open tracking only when necessary, such as when you rely on open rate data or "opened email" conditions in your sequence logic or reporting.

In all other cases, it’s better to turn it off and focus on more reliable metrics like reply rates.

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.

On the Reports dashboard, you can track overall KPIs for your campaigns, including the Open rate. You can also export lists of recipients who have opened your emails in multiple campaigns, based on the chosen filters.

Open rate helps you know the effectiveness of your subject lines and intro sentences. Test and refine these elements for better email engagement.

FAQs

Here are some frequently asked questions about open rates, along with their answers.

1) How can I determine if open tracking is enabled or disabled in my ongoing campaign?

Open tracking is disabled by default. To enable it, update the campaign's tracking settings.

When open tracking is enabled, the statistics will show the open rate percentage. If it’s disabled, no data about email opens is collected.

2) If the statistics show that a recipient has opened my email multiple times, how can I be sure it's accurate?

Snov.io automatically detects opens made by bots and does not count them to statistics.

If your recipient manually forwards the email to a teammate, any subsequent opens by additional recipients will be recorded in the email opens statistics.

3) Why is my open rate so low? How can I improve it?

While open rates are not the best metric for monitoring engagement, they may still serve as a useful indicator of certain issues in your email settings or content. If you notice a decrease in the open rates, it's a sign that you should review your sending schedule, as well as the content of your emails (such as the subject line).

If you need assistance with something not covered in this article, please contact us at help@snov.io or through our live support chat.