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Open rate tracking gives you valuable insight into how your recipients are engaging with your email campaigns. By seeing how many recipients open your emails, you can gauge subject line effectiveness, identify trends in engagement, and improve future communications.
This feature is optional and disabled by default.
1: Availability
This feature is only supported when your system environment is configured to use Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) for outbound email delivery. On environments using a different email provider, open rate tracking will not be available.
2: What is Open Rate Tracking?
Open rate tracking uses a small, invisible image (a tracking pixel) inserted into the body of each outgoing email. When a recipient opens the email and their email client loads images, the pixel is requested from the servers, this request is counted as an "open."
3: Limitations of Open Rate Tracking
While helpful for understanding engagement trends, open rate tracking is not a precise measurement tool. Consider the following caveats:
Image blocking: Many modern email clients block images by default, meaning the tracking pixel may never load even if the email is opened.
Previews and proxies: Some clients (e.g., Apple Mail or Gmail) pre-fetch images via proxy servers for preview or security purposes. These can result in false positives (opens being recorded even though the recipient hasn’t actively opened the email).
Multiple opens: If a recipient opens the same email more than once, multiple opens may be recorded, potentially inflating the open rate.
4: Important Considerations for Data Privacy & Compliance
Open rate tracking may be subject to data privacy laws and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union or similar laws in other jurisdictions. These laws may consider tracking pixels as a form of personal data collection or user profiling.
If you enable this feature, it is your responsibility to ensure:
You have a lawful basis (e.g., user consent) for collecting tracking data.
Your privacy policy and user agreements are updated to reflect the use of tracking technologies.
You inform recipients of the use of open tracking in accordance with relevant regulations.
We strongly recommend consulting your legal counsel or privacy compliance team before enabling this feature, particularly if your recipients are located in regulated regions such as the EU or California.
5: Enabling Open Rate Tracking
To enable open rate tracking, open your email invitation definition and then enable the toggle setting for Open Rate Tracking in the Email Settings panel. This change will apply to all future emails sent by this email invitation.
6: Reporting and Analytics
When open rate tracking is enabled, related engagement data will be captured through Amazon SES and stored in SmartHub. Open rate metrics can be viewed directly within the built-in Fieldwork report, providing a quick overview of email performance. Additionally, for advanced analysis and customized visualizations, this data can be incorporated into user-defined reports via our Studio reporting application. This flexible reporting approach ensures you can monitor email engagement at the level of detail most relevant to your needs.