Mailtrack.ioImagine spending hours, resources, and effort on an email campaign but never knowing if the recipient even opened your message. That’s the kind of uncertainty no marketer, brand, or solopreneur wants to experience. After all, what good is an email if it remains unopened or gets marked as spam?
Thankfully, email tracking pixels can spare you the uncertainty of not knowing how your email performs.
In this article, we will discuss email tracking pixels in great detail so you can maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Towards the end, you’ll also learn about a better and smarter alternative to tracking pixels.
What is an Email Tracking Pixel?
An email tracking pixel, also known as a web beacon, is a 1×1-pixel image, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Technically, it is a piece of HTML or JavaScript code embedded in the email’s body via a transparent image. It is used by email marketers to monitor the open rates of the emails they send and collect information.
You can add an email tracking pixel to any email you send to collect first-party data. This data can tell you:
- If the email was opened
- The IP address, device type, and email provider of the recipient
- The location of the recipient
- Whether the recipient clicked on any links in the email
- The time spent on the email and how much of it was read/scrolled
All of these make it a useful email marketing tool for measuring performance.
How Does it Work?
If you’re already wondering how such a tiny image can do so much heavy lifting, well, here’s the secret behind it.
The email tracking pixel has to be embedded in the body of the email for it to work. You can manually add it right in the header or the footer tag when you’re writing the code of the email. Once the recipient opens the email, their browser runs the tracking pixel code by default. In doing so, the browser sends a signal to your server(s).
So you get to know when your recipient opens your email.
Tracking pixels work the same way cookies do on a website. Cookies store data like your preferences by interacting with your browser and servers. Meanwhile, a tracking pixel collects data.
But unlike an explicit disclaimer that comes with a cookie, an email tracking pixel works more behind-the-scenes. Your recipient is unaware that their email activity is being tracked for performance. This is one of the reasons why tracking pixels have been the topic of cyber ethics debates, but more on that later in the article.
Benefits of Email Tracking Pixels in Email Marketing
Controversy aside, tracking pixels are used widely by marketers because these nondescript pieces of code can provide useful and actionable insights in specific email campaigns. Here’s how:
1. Collects Useful Data
Email tracking pixels can pick up crucial information about recipient behavior when executed correctly. This is first-party data that you can use to improve your next email marketing campaigns.
It’s especially helpful if you happen to send cold emails on a large scale to promote your products or services. It also allows you to segment your mailing list and make your outreach more relevant by analyzing a user’s previous open rates. You can also A/B test your email campaigns with varying subject lines and body content for effectiveness.
To sum it up, you can fine-tune your email marketing efforts with the help of email tracking pixels, ensuring better performance and ROI.
2. Easy to Implement
You don’t have to be a seasoned performance marketer to use email tracking pixels. These are easy to understand and use. And if you enlist an email service provider, chances are they will already insert the appropriate code for you.
3. Improves Customer Experience
Not sure if you’re targeting the correct audience? Data collected by tracking pixels can reveal deeper insights about recipient behavior.
The insights you gain from your email tracking pixels can help you create bespoke emails for your customers in the future. You can offer them better and more personalized emails instead of filling their inbox with generic ones.
Personalization is key to improving customer satisfaction and gaining their trust. It allows you to build a strong rapport with your customers and retain them for the long term.
4. Enhance Ethical Email Marketing
Tracking pixels can help marketers create customized email communication and targeted marketing campaigns. This means recipients can expect personalized emails and ads that match their search queries or immediate requirements.
Moreover, in most cases, the use of tracking pixels is mentioned in the privacy policy of the sender.
While privacy concerns should certainly not be ignored, ethical marketers always keep the customers’ well-being in mind when using tracking pixels. We will address the matter in greater detail in the subsequent sections. For now, let’s retain our focus on email tracking pixels in marketing.
How to Add Tracking Pixels to Your Email
If you’re keen on giving email tracking pixels a shot, here are two ways in which you can add it to your email:
1. Manual Addition
We already discussed this method briefly, but to reiterate, you can add the code for your email tracking pixel in the HTML of your email. It typically looks like this:
<img src=”https://example.com/tracking-pixel.png” alt=”” width=”1″ height=”1″ />
You should insert it just before the </body> tag in the HTML code.
But if you’re using JavaScript, your tracking pixel code will look something like this:
<script>
// JavaScript Tracking Pixel Code
(function() {
var pixel = new Image(1, 1);
pixel.src = “https://example.com/tracking-pixel.gif”;
})();
</script>
Irrespective of the programming language, you’ll need to embed a simple code into the code of your email to make it work. This is the easiest way of adding tracking pixels, but there is room for error if you’re not experienced with HTML or JavaScript.
2. Via Google Analytics
Your second option is to use Google Analytics. If you already have a Google account, you can create a tracking URL, either manually or by using a URL generator. This needs to be inserted precisely where the image will go.
For non-Google users, you will need to create a Universal Analytics account before following the same steps.
Once done, attach the image to your email, and you’re done.
Whether you do it manually or by using Google Analytics, you will need to create an image that is one pixel by one pixel wide. Save it as a transparent image before you start working on the URL. You can use any image editor to create the pixel image file.
It’s simple if you know what you’re doing, but sometimes there are some challenges to inserting tracking pixels, too.
Challenges to Adding Tracking Pixels to Email
A word of caution — email tracking pixels are usually embedded at the end of the body of the email. This helps make it accurate.
However, if your email is long and therefore more than 102kb, Gmail will clip the email. Your email tracking pixel will not load, and you will not be able to track the performance of your campaign.
You could add it right before the beginning of the email body, but the safest practice is to “minify” your email code.
Another major problem with adding tracking pixels to your email is that the results are conditional. If the recipient opens the emails as soon as they receive it, tracking pixels will not work.
Whether you have added it to your signature or towards the beginning of the email, it can only work a minimum of 30 seconds from the time it lands in your recipient’s inbox.
In addition, if your email recipient uses an ad blocker or some other service to protect their privacy, your email tracking pixel will fall flat on its face. Sometimes, generating a URL from scratch can also be difficult if you’re doing it for the first time.
What Happens if an Email Tracking Pixel Breaks?
For the email tracking pixel to work, the recipient’s server must load the image. However, sometimes, the tracking image fails to load for multiple reasons. This could be because of poor internet connection at the recipient’s end, image blockers, or a variety of other errors.
If the tracking pixel fails to load, it “breaks.”
A broken email tracking pixel cannot collect accurate open rate or click data. Even if the recipient opens your email, the tracking pixel might be unable to trace it.
In another scenario, a misplaced or poorly coded tracking pixel can break the email. This happens when you don’t test emails with tracking pixels and, therefore, cannot proactively fix errors before sending to your list.
Thankfully, there are ways to fix both problems.
How to Fix Broken Email Tracking Pixels
The best way to ensure your pixel functions correctly is to use encrypted email tracking pixels to get around pixel or image blockers. This needs technical expertise which you may not have though, especially if you’re using tracking pixels for the first time in your emails.
Only non-parameterized and encrypted tracking pixels can avoid blockers. If you’re not sure how to generate these pixels, you may need to seek professional help if your tracking pixels continue to break.
For the other scenario, to avoid tracking pixels breaking up complex emails, you need to add them to the live test emails. If the email breaks, you can go to the backend code and fix the tracking URL.
When using email tracking pixels, it’s a good practice to include them in all your emails to prevent such last-minute problems.
Are Email Tracking Pixels Legal?
Federal law does not have any specific provision against the use of email tracking pixels. So it is legal to use email tracking pixels as long as you abide by global privacy laws.
However, one of the biggest pitfalls of using tracking pixels is that a misconfigured URL can send user data to other servers that are not yours. This has the potential to expose sensitive customer data if not used with care.
As marketers, your intention may be tracking email open rates to fine-tune your customer communication and experience management. That’s why you should be extra cautious about the privacy concerns underlying its usage.
Email tracking pixels have also been hotly debated because of how surreptitious they are when tracking recipient information. That’s why big tech players like Apple have even developed policies like Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). Global privacy protection laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also account for uninformed data collection from unsuspecting users.
So, if you’re using or plan to use email tracking pixels, here are a few things you need to consider:
MPP’s Impact on Email Tracking Pixels
Apple’s MPP, introduced in June 2021, prevents marketers from deploying transparent email tracking pixels to monitor recipient behavior. This feature preloads emails even before the user clicks on it. This includes images with tracking URLs.
So even if the recipient has not opened the email, your email tracking pixels register an open rate.
Because all Apple Mail users on iOS15 can use MPP, it’s a handicap for performance marketers. In the presence of MPP, email tracking pixels no longer provide accurate data.
So, the biggest impact of MPP on email tracking pixels is that it makes the data it collects unreliable.
GDPR’s Regulations Regarding Email Tracking Pixels
GDPR mentions user consent as a precondition to obtaining, managing, and storing personal data. Customer data obtained via email tracking pixels falls under this category. So, you must come clean about tracking pixels in your privacy policy guidelines to avoid legal skirmishes.
You also need to provide your recipients the choice to opt out of tracking pixels if they wish to. Otherwise, the use of tracking pixels is rendered illegal by data security laws.
Gmail Image Policy and Email Tracking Pixels
Google regularly updates its Gmail Image Policy to safeguard its users against data theft. Gmail scans images sent via emails to check for suspicious and potentially harmful content. This includes checking transparent images for tracking URLs that collect data about the recipient, like their device or location.
In addition, Gmail users can also choose to turn off automatic image loading to prevent image-tracking pixels from doing their job.
This means the fate of email tracking pixels is determined by Google’s ever-changing Gmail Image Policy.
Alternatives to Adding Email Tracking Pixels
Although helpful, you can experience multiple challenges when using tracking pixels for email marketing. To future-proof your email marketing and avoid possible legal challenges, you can instead opt for:
Gmail Read Receipts
This is a special feature available only for Google Workspace users. When activated, Gmail Read Receipts tells you the time and date your email was opened.
However, the challenge with Gmail Read Receipt is that only Workspace users can access this feature. Standard Gmail users cannot request read receipts.
In addition, the recipient might have to approve the read-receipt request before you get the notification. That’s because Gmail gives its users the option to send or not send read receipts.
You will not get read receipts for mass emails. Gmail also clarifies that read receipts are not a surefire indicator of email delivery.
Although read receipts are an alternative to email tracking pixels, it’s not the most reliable method of tracking email performance.
Mailsuite
Mailsuite is an exclusive email management solution that lets you track all recipient interaction metrics. You can track singular and mass emails sent from Gmail or Outlook for first opens, follow-up, and no-reply alerts, clicks on links, and more. You can also track all these KPIs for every email sent in a mass campaign.
With Mailsuite, you also get access to a CRM dashboard and daily reports to analyze the performance of your emails.
Mailsuite Cares About Data Privacy
With Mailsuite, you no longer need to worry about privacy concerns. Mailsuite is not only GDPR compliant but is also audited annually by Google for security. If your recipients request a copy of their data or want to have their data removed from the database, Mailsuite will comply. You can also disable email tracking anytime by unchecking the “Track emails by default” option in the settings on your dashboard for the emails you don’t want to track.
So, as marketers, you can enjoy the best of tracking without jeopardizing the safety and security of your users.
Innovate Your Email Performance Management
Despite being a rather useful tool for email performance management, email tracking pixels are not a foolproof solution. It falls short in the age of ever-changing privacy laws, innovative user data protection policies, and increasing cyber security risk.
So, what you need is state-of-the-art email tracking that delivers on its promise.
That’s why a robust solution like Mailsuite is your answer. With a host of innovative features powered by new-age technology, Mailsuite has got your back.
If you’re rethinking your email performance management, give Mailsuite a shot.
