In cold email outreach campaigns, deliverability is a legit concern. And even after you draft the perfect email, the success of your campaign hinges on the email getting into the recipient’s inbox. But even if an email does make it to the inbox, there’s another challenge: tracking accuracy.
For Gmail and Google Workspace (GW) users, a common issue arises from the “Show images” prompt. Open rates and click-through rates can’t be tracked accurately until the prompt is clicked by the recipient. This is a problem for the marketers and salespeople who are attempting to quantify how successful their cold outreach campaigns are.
In short, the prompt affects the actual open rates and click-through rates as they can seem significantly lower than they are—messing up your campaign performance data.
The experiment: The impact of tracking pixel and tracking link
The Warmy Research Team set out to determine the influence of tracking pixels and tracking links on deliverability, as well as if the “Show image” prompt influenced tracking and deliverability.
To do this, the team sent out two templates each for each type of domain.
Old domain/already warmed up:
- One without any links and was used to test sending only with the TP.
- One had links and was used to test both TP and TL
New domain/not yet warmed up:
- One without any links and was used to test sending only with the TP.
- One had links and was used to test both TP and TL
The importance of accurate tracking for cold outreach
The ability of senders to track metrics is critical because measuring successes enables sales and marketing teams to know what’s working and what’s not. For instance, open rates and click-through rates gives you an idea if and whether your prospects are responding to what you are sending.
Additionally, proper and accurate tracking helps you measure engagement patterns, continuously refine content, and measure ROI. After all, you want to measure your email campaigns so that you have evidence that your outreach is working and, more importantly, to confirm if you should continue to invest in the strategy.
The impact of the tracking links and tracking pixels on deliverability
Here were our key findings:
- We observed no measurable impact on deliverability across all templates tested.
- “Show images” prompt was triggered only when MailWizz was used, regardless of age and health of domain
- Presence of Tracking Pixel and Tracking Link had no measurable impact on deliverability.
The “Show images” prompt: what you need to know
- When a recipient receives an email from someone for the first time, they will see a prompt to “Show images.” It looks like a gray banner at the top portion of the email, with instructions to click a button to “show images” within the email. These images may be corporate logos, tracking pixels, and other images.
- ESPs like Gmail or Google Workspace need to ensure the email is from a trusted source. This prompt prevents malicious emails or phishing attempts from loading external (and potentially harmful) content right away.
- In essence, the email sits in a sort of limbo because until the recipient clicks on the prompt, the email service provider will not consider it to be trustworthy.
- However, upon clicking the prompt, the ESP will see the sender as trustworthy. The next time the sender sends an email to that particular recipient, images will be loaded automatically.
Implications for tracking open rates and data accuracy
- The “Show images” prompt directly impacts the tracking of email engagement metrics, particularly open rates. Open rate monitoring usually involves the use of tracking pixels on the email’s images. When the receiver opens the email and the image is downloaded from the server, the pixel transmits a return signal to that email server, alerting it to the email having been “opened.”
- Until the recipient clicks the “Show images” prompt, their ESP will not load images or the tracking pixel, rendering the email technically unopened. Open rates will not be reliably tracked during this time and the open rate metrics for cold outreach campaigns may appear lower than expected.
Recap and key findings
- The “Show images” prompt does not impact email deliverability, but it plays a crucial role in the tracking accuracy of open and click rates.
- This immediate delay of the prompt can result in incorrect reporting on open rates and click-through rates since, in order for these metrics to be measured, a recipient must click the prompt.
- To improve tracking accuracy, images should be embedded as inline attachments. This allows for the display of images (including tracking pixels) to be automatically displayed, enabling more time-sensitive and accurate data for engagement metrics.
Maximize your ROI with reliable tracking
With no clear data on open rates, click-through rates, and interactions, you might as well just be shooting blind. The insights from our study, combined with Warmy’s deliverability tools, enable senders to make data-driven decisions to improve the performance of cold outreach campaigns.
Embedding tracking pixels and tracking links in your emails helps senders monitor how recipients are engaging with content. However, these tracking mechanisms must work correctly. As our study revealed, the “Show images” prompt can actually lead to skewed open rates and click-through data.
Warmy’s suite of tools helps you by ensuring accurate tracking and providing real-time insights into how your cold emails are performing:
- Template Checker: Helps you to maximize your email content by pointing out potential spam triggers to increase deliverability, so your tracking pixels and links won’t be a waste of time sitting in the spam folder. (Yes, we also have a Chrome Extension!)
- Domain Health Hub: Get live feedback on the health of your domain so you can pivot your outreach for better results.
- Warmup Preferences: This additional feature allows senders to customize the warmup distribution across various email providers. This gives senders even more accurate insights on the behaviors and patterns of their target recipients. With the additional option to choose between B2B and B2C engagement patterns, this makes for even more comprehensive information.
When you combine the findings from our report with Warmy’s features, you can maximize your ROI by ensuring that your emails reach the inbox and that your engagement data reflects the true performance of your campaigns.
Don’t let inaccurate tracking cloud your results. Download the full report now.
