Email Tracking and Viewing Email Opens
Email Tracking
When you have email tracking turned on, Cirrus Insight can help you know who opens the email or clicks on a link in your email body or signature. These analytics show up embedded in your email conversation so that you can see the contact activity while you are reading or composing an email. For best results include as many useful links in your email body and signature as possible. This will help improve the email tracking logic for each contact who clicks on a link you send them.
To accomplish email tracking, Cirrus Insight adds a 1x1 blank image to each tracked email. When the recipient opens the message their email client requests the image from the Cirrus Insight server and then Cirrus Insight knows the email has been opened. For link tracking Cirrus Insight rewrites the link when at the time the email is sent. When the recipient clicks the link the request comes to the Cirrus Insight server. The link request and redirect is recorded in the database.
Email Tracking Results:
The Cirrus Insight Email Tracking API stores the user (yourself) in the database as well. It recognizes your cookie and makes every attempt to ignore your opens of an email vs the recipient.
- Minimizing False Positives:
- The Email Tracking Algorithm attempts to recognize you as the sender, which then ignores your opens in the contact feed although they are stored in the database
- The algorithm attempts to ignore multiple repeated opens. For example, Outlook technically opens an email up to 8 times when you read one. The algorithm attempts to ignore these
- Common Causes for False Positives
- The sender cookie has not been recognized and therefore the sender views/opens are attributed to the recipient
- The sender or the recipient views or opens an email from a mobile device the system does not yet recognize
- False Negatives – An email is opened and the activity history does not show the results
- Mail Server – Certain mail servers and settings can prevent the pixel from being downloaded. In which case an open would not be recorded.
- Mail Client – Certain mail clients and settings can prevent the pixel from being downloaded. In which case, an open would not be recorded.
- User Identity – An unknown device or recipient will result in showing “Someone” has opened the email.
- Forwards – If Cirrus Insight recognizes or has previously identified a user who is the recipient of a forwarded email, then the new recipient will show up in the activity feed.
Please note that as you have more interactions over time between sender and recipient, the algorithm will adjust the identify of users become more accurate. For the best results, send emails with links as links/URL’s are always trackable and help improve the algorithm to recognize the identity of the user and their device. Emails which are sent to a single recipient are easier to identify than those emails with many contacts in the To: and CC: fields. When Cirrus Insight recognizes an open has happened but is uncertain who opened the email, the analytics will show “Someone” opened the email rather than specifically who opened the email.
If the recipient of a forwarded email has previously been identified by Cirrus Insight, you may see that someone who was not a recipient of the email has actually opened the email. In this case, the email has been forwarded and the tracking data even applies to those were not in the To: or CC: fields of the original message.
The Cirrus Insight email tracking information is available in the Cirrus Insight task pane for an individual email trail. The dark blue icon for web page visits is active for users who have implemented tracking. The light blue Salesforce icon shows chatter feed activity for the contact, and the Pink recipient filter allows you to choose which recipients are included in the tracking information.
Updated June 2021
