What: This is an exclusive Mailtrack for Gmail feature that lets you know about people using non-trackable email services (around 5%-10% of recipients are non-trackable).
How: When you hover over the checkmarks in Gmail it will say 'Open status may be unreliable.
Why does Mailtrack have this feature? We’ve noticed that some people use non-trackable email services i.e. not trackable by Mailtrack or any other email tracking service. We prefer to warn you of this, instead of giving you inaccurate information.
How does email open tracking work?
Mailtrack uses email tracking pixel technology.
Mailtrack adds a tracking pixel (a really tiny image) to your emails. When someone opens your emails the tracking pixel is downloaded and sends a call to our servers to let us know the mail has been opened.
How reliable is email tracking?
Email tracking, like everything, has its limitations.
Certain email services have settings that can indirectly block email tracking. Outlook, for instance, has a setting that can block automatic image downloads. If this setting is enabled then it can essentially block email tracking in Outlook for that particular user.
Nevertheless, Most email services and users don’t block automatic image downloads.
Pixel-based email tracking (and Mailtrack in particular) is one of the most reliable ways to track email opens. It is certainly more reliable than Google Workspace’s Gmail read receipts, which rely on the recipient accepting the email return receipt.
Using trackable links to track email opens
If you’re concerned about the tracking pixel in your emails being blocked then you can add tracked links using Mailtrack’s click tracking feature. If someone clicks on a link in your email then you can be sure that they’ve definitely read your message.