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Why Tracking doesn't show the email was opened
Why Tracking doesn't show the email was opened

This article explains why Tracking might not show that a particular recipient opened your email.

Updated over a week ago

Email open rates tracking is available on all Mixmax plans, including the Free plan, but some options like clicks and downloads tracking are available only on the Mixmax Small Business plan and above. Check out our pricing page for more information.

You may know that an email was opened (perhaps because you received a reply), but your Live Feed or the lightning bolts in Gmail don't indicate that the email was opened. Here are a few reasons why you may not see open events for your emails:

  1. You need to refresh your browser tab. If you don't see the tracking lightning bolts in your Sent folder, refresh your browser tab and wait a few seconds for the lightning bolts to appear.

  2. Your recipient is using a tracking blocker or image blocker. We use a tiny pixel to track opens. An open won't be recorded if:

    a. The recipient opens the email on a legacy email client that blocks all images from being viewed. This also means that images in signatures and other media won't carry through to the recipient, so, in practice, this is quite rare.

    b. The recipient has software to block email tracking. This is also rare, and Mixmax circumvents most email tracking blockers.

  3. Your recipient is based in the European Union. Tracking to EU-based recipients may not be possible 100% of the time due to GDPR laws. For more information about this, go to Tracking EU recipients.

However, click tracking is not susceptible to email tracking blockers, so if you see that a link was clicked but an email was not opened, it means that the email WAS opened, but the recipient is blocking images.

If you don't see a lightning bolt on the email, then the email was sent without tracking.

The lightning bolt reflects the tracking status of the most recent email you sent in that conversation.

Here are some reasons why you may have sent your email without tracking:

  1. You're on the Free plan and ran out of tracked emails. You get 100 tracked emails per month on the Free plan. The month re-sets on the first day of each month.

  2. The email was sent with tracking turned off. You can turn the tracking on/off by default in your Tracking settings, and you can turn the tracking on/off for each individual email. For more details, see Setting up tracking. Note that if you used a different computer that didn't have Mixmax installed or if Mixmax was not enabled on your Gmail account, the email will be sent without tracking.

  3. You sent the email from your phone. Mixmax tracks emails that are sent from desktop Gmail. Emails sent from your phone will not be tracked.

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