Does Email Open Tracking Negatively Affect Deliverability? (2024)

Tracking email open rates negatively affects deliverability.

There are tools that allow you to see how many people opened your emails.

The problem with these tools is that they aren’t accurate, and they negatively impact your deliverability (causing your emails to go to spam).

In this article, I explain everything that you need to know about email open tracking software, and I will share an alternative metric that you can track that doesn’t negatively affect your deliverability:

• What is email open tracking?
• How does open tracking work?
• Is open tracking accurate?
• Why does open tracking negatively affect your deliverability?
• Alternative metric to track the success of your cold email campaigns

What is email open tracking?

Email open tracking is a way to know what percentage of people opened your emails.

Most cold email sending tools allow you to track your email open rate by default.

There are also extensions that you can install with Gmail and Outlook that allow you to track your email open rate.

How does open tracking work?

Open tracking software tools work by embedding an invisible 1x1 pixel image file into the emails that you send.

When a recipient clicks to open your email, this invisible image file will load upon the email opening, and this is then tracked as an open.

These tools use the image’s loading event to track when the email has been opened.

Is open tracking accurate?

Email open tracking is not accurate.

The reason is that in 2021, Apple released an update (Mail Privacy Protection) that “prevents senders from seeing if you’ve opened the email they sent you.”

Apple dominates the email client market with a controlling 58.96% share. This means that if you are sending cold emails, then open tracking will not work for the majority of your recipients.

Also, since open tracking can negatively affect your deliverability, it isn’t accurate since your emails are more likely to go to spam. You are in essence tracking opens for emails that are going to spam, which is not the same as tracking opens for emails that go to the primary inbox. Obviously open rates will be much lower for emails that go to spam compared to emails that go to the primary inbox.

Why does open tracking negatively affect your deliverability?

The reason that open tracking negatively affects your deliverability is because email service providers, such as Gmail & Outlook, do not want to show their users marketing/promotional/spam emails.

Their job is to show their users only the most relevant and necessary emails, otherwise their users’ inboxes will become flooded with spam.

If your cold emails contain a 1x1 pixel image file to track opens, then email service providers will know that your emails are sales/promotional in nature, and are much more likely to send them to spam.

At 34:25 in the below video, Jesse Ouellette explains why email open tracking hurts your deliverability:

Alternative metric to track the success of your cold email campaigns

The only thing that matters is your positive response rate.

In the below LinkedIn post, I explain why your positive response rate is the only important metric that you should track; I also share a screenshot of a warning label that Gmail adds to your emails if you are tracking open rates:

If you send your cold emails with Emailchaser, then you can see your positive response rate in the Analytics page of your campaign.

Frequently asked questions

Final thoughts

If you track your email open rate, then your cold emails are more likely to go to the spam folder.

Fortunately, you don’t need to track your open rate, since the only metric that matters is your positive response rate.

If you send cold emails with Emailchaser, then you can see your positive response rate in the Analytics page of each campaign.

Finally, your positive response rate directly impacts your deliverability. If you have a low positive response rate, then your email accounts will be blacklisted by ESPs. You can learn how to launch cold email campaigns that have high positive response rates in my article How To Create An Evergreen Cold Email Campaign.