Should you track opens in cold email?
Do not use opens to judge interest in cold email. Treat them as a rough health signal at most. The open count is inflated by software that loads the tracking pixel before a human sees the message, and you cannot separate those loads from real ones.
Replies and clicks come from people. Build your decisions on those.
How does open tracking work?
The tool adds a one-pixel image to the HTML of your email. When the recipient's mail client downloads that image, the tool records an open. The method assumes that downloading the image means a person looked at the message.
That assumption used to hold for most clients. It no longer does for a large share of recipients.
What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?
Apple Mail Privacy Protection, known as MPP, arrived with iOS 15 in 2021. When a person who turned it on receives a message, Apple's servers download the images in it, including your tracking pixel, and hide the recipient's IP address and location. The open registers within moments of delivery. The person may read the message at lunchtime, never or on another day.
Gmail and Microsoft clients use their own image proxies, which also fetch images for the recipient. The result is an open rate that is inflated, differs between providers and cannot be compared across lists. Which provider a recipient uses decides how wrong the number is.
Why do false opens cause bad decisions?
Three habits depend on a trustworthy open:
- Subject line tests. If a large part of your list opens automatically, the winning subject line is the one that happened to reach more Apple users.
- Follow-up timing. A sequence that waits for an open before sending a follow-up reacts to a proxy.
- Lead rating. A prospect marked as engaged because the pixel fired is a prospect nobody has read an email from.
Which signals are worth tracking instead?
| Signal | Reliability | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Positive reply | High | Someone wants to talk |
| Other reply | High | A person read and answered, including a no |
| Click | Medium | A person followed a link, although security scanners can add false clicks |
| Open | Low | Possibly a person, possibly a proxy |
A reply is the strongest signal because a person had to write it. A click ranks second. Scanners at some companies visit links before delivery, so filter clicks that arrive seconds after the send.
Is there any use for opens?
There is one. Opens are a coarse health check. If a campaign shows almost no opens at all, even with proxies inflating the count, your mail may be going to spam or your tracking domain may be failing. A very low number is informative. A high number proves nothing.
Tracking also adds a pixel and rewritten links to the message. Some deliverability specialists switch tracking off for a first email to keep it plain. The evidence on the effect is mixed, so test it on your own list, with a sample, before you generalise.
How do you decide for your own campaigns?
- Switch open tracking off for the first email if deliverability matters more to you than the metric.
- Measure replies per company contacted. That is the number your pipeline depends on.
- Track clicks only on links that matter, such as a link to a proposal or a pricing page.
- Never branch a sequence on an open. Branch on a reply, a click or silence.
- Read opens only in aggregate, as one check that mail is arriving.
How does anymail treat opens?
anymail weights replies and clicks and gives opens no weight in company temperature, because a pixel load is not a person. Open tracking is a campaign setting, and you can switch it off separately for Google, Microsoft and other providers. Provider is recognised from the recipient's domain only, so "Google" means gmail.com addresses, and a company on Google Workspace under its own domain counts as other. A filter drops clicks that arrive within seconds of the send, since a person cannot react that fast. The temperature page shows how the weighted signals add up per company.
Frequently asked questions
What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection?
It is a feature in Apple Mail, introduced in 2021, that downloads remote images such as tracking pixels through Apple's servers when mail arrives. The open is recorded whether or not the person reads the message.
Are click rates also unreliable?
They are more reliable than opens, but not perfect. Security gateways at some companies visit every link in a message before delivery, so a click that arrives seconds after the send is usually a scanner.
Should I turn open tracking off?
Many senders do, at least for the first email. Since the number is inflated for a large part of your list, switching tracking off removes a misleading metric and one pixel from the message.
Does anymail count opens in company temperature?
No. Company temperature weights replies and clicks, and an open carries no weight. Open tracking can be switched off per campaign for Google, Microsoft and other providers.
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