I'm working on a mass email feature and want to track not just click-through rates but also when my emails are viewed. I've got the click tracking down—it's pretty straightforward with a button and parameters. But for the 'seen' functionality, I thought about embedding an image hosted on my server and tracking when it's loaded. For example, I'd send an email to `[email protected]` with a `blast_email_id` of 2, and I'd include a request in the image src. The issue I'm facing is that while it works when I access it directly, in Gmail it's not fetching the image from my server, likely because Gmail uses a proxy. It seems like a security feature, but I'm looking for any ideas or workarounds. Thanks!
3 Answers
You might run into issues since many email clients block external images by default. Your tracking might not be accurate because the data won’t show real open rates. Just be careful; users value their privacy, and many clients are designed to prevent tracking like this.
I think the problem could stem from Gmail and many other clients blocking remote content. Your best bet might be to explore alternatives to image tracking, like monitoring user interaction through links instead of images. Some users might have setups that bypass Gmail's caching, but it’s a gamble.
Gmail really doesn't want people to track email views, so they prefetch images and cache them. This means you can't reliably determine if the email was opened or not. Even if you track it, you'd only know that the email reached the inbox, not if the user actually opened it.
Thanks for your input! I'll definitely look into other tracking methods. Maybe using links or buttons instead of images could work better.