Dec 6, 2013
How Gmail’s Image Caching Affects Open Tracking
A few days ago, the Gmail folks changed how they display images in their emails. In the past, Gmail would make a request for an image every time an email was opened. But now they temporarily store those images—even the one we use for open tracking.
You may know this already, but along with most ESPs, MailChimp tracks opens by placing a tiny, single-pixel-sized image in each email. When someone views images in the email, our image-hosting servers get a request for the pixel-sized pic, and we use that request to track opens for each subscriber.
Using cached images is a fine idea for Gmail, but it has the potential to mess with open tracking for ESPs. Fortunately, MailChimp can still detect the first request for the open-tracking pixel. This won’t interfere with the count of “unique opens” you get in your reports, but it could prevent us from seeing multiple opens per subscriber.
We’ve done a few quick tests around the office, and, as far as I can see, this won’t affect POP- or IMAP-configured mail clients. The iPhone client appears to count multiple opens, but we don’t know yet about the behavior of the Gmail app for iPhone or Android. Those two are pseudo-web-based, so I can see them being affected—if not now, then in the future.
You’ve got to love Google for shaking things up every now and then. Gmail’s tabbed inbox changed how subscribers opened our emails, and now image caching changes how we track those opens. The good news is that we’re still able to track unique opens for each and every one of your subscribers.
UPDATE 12/12/13
In Gmail’s announcement today, they said image caching allows them to securely turn on images by default. Image caching still lowers our ability to track repeat opens, but turning those images on means we’ll be more accurate when tracking unique opens. At least, theoretically it should work that way.
By leaving images turned off, Gmail has been allowing subscribers to open emails without downloading our tracking pixel, so those opens were invisible to us. If Gmail is going to display images automatically, those previously invisible opens should suddenly become visible.
That’s exciting in a nerdy data way, but keep in mind it doesn’t affect the number of subscribers actually reading your email. It just makes the count of unique opens more accurate. Then again, maybe seeing your beautiful email content will get subscribers to keep opening in the future.
Ernest
Could you please describe more on how you are still able to track unique views?
12.08.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Ernest, The unique opens are counted the very first time the pixel tracking image is opened. So in this case if the reader loads the images, Google will need to load the image at least that first time before they can cache it. If that person comes right back and re-opens the email while the image is still cached that’s where you’ll potentially miss some of the tracking for total opens, but that doesn’t affect that first/unique open.
12.09.2013
Mark Jaquith
Gmail is NOT caching images, as of this writing. All requests are proxied through immediately. The only thing to worry about is browser caching. Google isn’t hanging on to the images. Each request the browser makes gets passed on to the original server.
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Mark, We’ve been doing a lot of testing to try and get a grip on what is or isn’t occurring. That being said, it appears that as of right now, accounts that have been switched over to the “auto-display” option are having the images immediately proxied through, but caching locally for some period of time. After that local cache expires it seems that the image is re-loaded from a Google cached version and cached locally again. I’ve yet to feel confident about the exact length of time either of these items are cached. It also looks like images with identical urls that have been recently cached will serve the cached version across multiple subscribers (at least for some period of time.) It’s of course, hard to keep tabs or know for sure what’s happening as they’ve always got the option to change it, but one of my co-workers wrote a little tool in his spare time that might be of interest to you. http://eepurl.com/LkigT Basically, it’ll write a log file back into a png (please forgive me if I’m not technically correct on that description) and then display that log (without affecting the activity) so you can get a better idea of what might be occuring and when.
12.23.2013
Charlie
But what if Google decides to proxy the image when their SMTP server receives the mail? (Given spam, they would probably hash the image and store it once per hash.) In this case, all the emails going to Google would appear opened.
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Charlie, That’d certainly be a concern, but as we’ve been testing it’s quite clear that they’re only actually caching and loading images to serve back through their proxy servers when the user clicks open.
12.13.2013
Miles
What if another gmail user already opened an email with the same image?
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Miles, I don’t know if Google is or will be serving identical images that have already been cached back to other subscribers, but pixel tracking images are all unique down to the subscriber level, so they’ll continue to track unique opens at the very least.
12.13.2013
Tobias
I don’t think google will cache images for a newsletter per user.
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Tobias, As Google seems to only be caching images at the point the email is actually opened, it does appear that they are caching for each specific user. Also, if you take a look at one of their help docs on the topic of auto-loading the images you’ll see down towards the bottom that tracking may still work. Our testing so far, also appears to be caching at the subscriber level for unique opens at the very least.
12.13.2013
Guillaume
Not getting this. Isn’t Google caching the images on their server? In that case:
1) User A opens the email
2) Gmail sends a request to Mailchimp (–> unique opens += 1)
3) Gmail caches the received pixel to Google’s servers
4) User B opens the email
5) Gmail gets the pixel from Google’s servers (–> unique opens unchanged)
Or is there something I’m missing?
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Guillaume, There’s no evidence that Google is caching images for a campaign across multiple subscribers. Also, the pixel tracking images are dynamically created, so each email would contain it’s own “different” tracking pixel at the subscriber level. That being said, in Google’s own help article they also make reference that open tracking should still work. Hope that helps.
12.13.2013
torotobo
What makes you think the images are cached on first open and not on reception. If the images are cached when the message is received, your entire post is wrong, and you CANT track opens at all. What you will get back is the number of messages you sent to gmail.
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
We’ve been testing these changes on our end and so far, even on accounts that are now “auto-loading” images, they’re not recording opens until the open actually occurs. The actual flow is that once the email is actually clicked on to open, Google quickly pulls the images and then re-serves them via their proxy servers back to the end user.
12.13.2013
Renato
“You’ve got to love Google for shaking things up every now and then.”
– Got to love your irony.
R.
12.09.2013
Chris
i’m really glad to be with a company that puts so much effort into keeping us up to date about trends and changes in tech that effect our work. thanks for doing the heavy lifting. You guys rock!
12.09.2013
Len Jaffe
if tabbed inboxes really affected that your open rates, then it sounds as if you were relying on people not being savvy enough to filter their own mail boxes, or to turn off the auto loading of images in emails.
So it sounds to me like ‘open rates’ were artificially inflated based on folks not being email power users.
I read most of the bacon that I receive, but I seldom load the images, and if an email is entirely images, then i probably don’t read it, and I end up unsubscribing.
12.09.2013
Jennene
I did some tests on reading your emails in the preview panel in Outlook and not actually opening the emails. This also doesn’t seem to show up on the stats. Seems lots of people using outlook don’t always open emails if they can quickly read them.
12.09.2013
Peter Fletcher
Good question, Jennene. I’ve always understood that opens in the preview panel count as an open, so long as images are turned ON. I’m interested in getting some clarification on this.
12.09.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Peter and Jennene, If images are loaded even within the preview panel, that’d still count as an open as the tracking pixel would still be loaded. If you’re not seeing expected results for some reason, always feel free to reach out to our support team at: http://mailchimp.com/chat and they’ll be happy to take a closer look as well.
12.10.2013
Kelly
My client received an email from a subscriber saying he couldn’t read his email in Outlook. Jennene just commented on that, too.
If our subscribers are having a problem in Outlook, what can we do?
12.09.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Kelly, I don’t think that’d be related to the changes with image caching, but more likely something in the email design not playing nice in Outlook. Would you mind reaching out to our support team at: http://mailchimp.com/chat and they’ll be happy to take a closer look.
12.10.2013
Martijn
Give Google’s own tracking services (AdWords, Analytics), I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google offering paid Gmail tracking services at some point.
12.11.2013
Sarah Bromley
Mind blown. You are right, this sounds totally plausible. Ahh Google, what won’t you charge us for next.
12.13.2013
Denise
Will this affect your new sending time optimization for campaigns?
I was reading an article about the impact for email marketers and this bit prompted my question: “Tools that use multiple image downloads to infer read times and repeat reading will be negatively impacted.”
12.11.2013
Matthew MailChimp
Hey Denise, MailChimp’s send time optimization is based on clicks, which are not affected by Gmail’s image caching. Even if the image is the link, replacing the image source should not affect the link whatsoever.
As long as users enable click tracking in their campaigns, STO should work just fine.
12.11.2013
Denise
Awesome. Thanks Matthew!
12.11.2013
Jesse
Great article!
12.12.2013
Fred Franklin
How this change effect geo-targeting?
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Fred, While this will impact the amount of geolocation data available, we’ll still be able to pick up location data from signup forms and click activity of the subscriber.
12.13.2013
Alex
Matthew,
Thanks a lot for the post. Have you tested whether or not Google only requests images from the Mailchimp servers once a user ‘displays the images’ vs. Google always making the request for images, regardless if the user has chosen to display images, so that images are ready to be served from the Google servers?
If the latter is what Google is doing, that sounds like it has the potential to affect unique opens as well since images will always be requested by Google. Can you clarify?
Thanks again for the post!
-Alex
12.12.2013
Matthew MailChimp
My team has been testing this all week, including today. We don’t see any pre-caching of images. Our tests confirm that Gmail is caching the image when the user opens the email and not before. We’ll keep checking over the next few days just to be sure though.
Actually, anyone could test this. Just send a campaign to your own gmail address, and don’t open it. Check your reports to see what does or doesn’t happen.
12.12.2013
Chas
How can you be sure that they are not pre-caching all images before the recipient even views the image? Wouldn’t that throw the stats off quite a bit?
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Chas, We’ve been doing quite a bit of testing, and at least for now, they’re only loading the images, caching, and serving the images back via their proxy when the user clicks to open the email.
12.13.2013
Mike
I think you’re missing the point – the GMail tracking looks like it will *automatically* download the images and cache them when they reach the Gmail servers, *not* when someone actually opens the emails. Thus, it will make it look like *everyone* who receives an email through GMail has opened the email.
12.12.2013
Govind Kabra
Will you see 100% open rates now? The uniques tracking can get affected if gmail starts to download images in advance, to scan, even before users open emails.
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Govand, Our testing is showing that Google is only pulling in the images when a subscriber is actually clicking to open an email. Once they click to open, Google quickly pulls the images in and serves the content via their proxy servers. So in this flow, only subscribers who legitimately open the email will be recorded as unique opens.
12.13.2013
Rich Bringman
Your patience in responding to the same questions over and over is commendable.
12.13.2013
Ben MailChimp
+1
12.15.2013
Bill Forsyth III
@John You are my hero. I would have started verbally abusing people at this point. Should we start a pool to see how many times you have to answer the same question? I’m voting for 42 times.
12.18.2013
zvikico
According to the Gmail team article, images will be served “through Google’s own secure proxy servers”. This means you will be loosing the original IP, hence the geo location information for the gmail users. Essentially rendering the timewarp feature irrelevant for those users.
12.12.2013
Matthew MailChimp
Yeah, Google explicitly states that this will interfere with geolocation on opens.
Keep in mind we also get geolocation on clicks and through our opt-in forms, so the data should still be around.
12.12.2013
Mazzi
Are these “bogus” geo data still going to be returned by webhooks or will be filtered by Mailchimp/Mandrill?
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Mazzi, I’m not sure there’d be a way to easily filter these out on the fly. That being say, we’ll still be able to collect geolocation info on subscribe forms and click data. So while the data will be a little more difficult to get, it will still be available.
12.13.2013
Rob
Not sure if I’m following correctly, if Google is pre-caching every image won’t we be seeing unique ‘opens’ for people who don’t open the email but for whom Google has cached the image anyway?
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Rob, Based on our testing, there’s no evidence that Google is actually pre-caching anything. It appears that the actual caching happens on the fly when a subscriber clicks to open their email. At that point, the images are pulled in and Google serves them to the reader via their proxy servers. So in this structure, you’ll still only be seeing unique opens recorded for people who actually open the email.
12.13.2013
Kevin
Glad to hear tracking open rates wont be completely killed by this change.
Is MC able to track unique opens because the URL of the tracking pixel is unique for ‘each recipient’ we email?
I was concerned that the same url was being used for each recipient in a given blast and that that would show up as 1 open due to Google’s ‘safety check’. It sounds like you are saying that’s not that case for MC pixel.
Thanks for confirming.
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Kevin, The pixel tracking has been dynamically generated down to the subscriber level so unique opens will still be tracked correctly even with this new change in place.
12.13.2013
Xaver
How does this affect location tracking? Are all emails now opened by Google in US. Same question for the language
12.12.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Xaver, It will affect open tracking, but at this point I’m not sure to what extent on Google US vs Google in other countries. That being said, geolocation information will still be collected via subscribe forms and click activity, so while some of the data won’t be as easily available, there still will be some location data to work with.
12.13.2013
Eva
Why would Google want to do this? Faster load times? To eventually roll out their custom tracking suite? Other ideas?
12.12.2013
Tyler
They say it right in their blog post. By caching the images they can prevent malware (originally the reason clients turned this off). The side benefit is that email is now more anonymous.
I don’t see Google planning on making a service to make it easier to track people’s usage of email.
12.12.2013
Justin Knoll
If you send each user a unique tracking pixel link, then you can still measure open rate, perhaps more accurately than before. This makes perfect sense if you think about how caching proxies work. Every tracking pixel has a different URL and the proxy has to request it from the origin before it knows it’s a duplicate.
It appears, based on the fact that it’s a longstanding feature to see which subscribers opened a message, that MailChimp already does this:
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/about-open-tracking
Google acknowledges that unique tracking pixels allow senders to determine who opened and thus open rate:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?p=display_images&rd=1
In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links. As always, Gmail scans every message for suspicious content and if Gmail considers a sender or message potentially suspicious, images won’t be displayed and you’ll be asked whether you want to see the images.
There are other privacy and security advantages to this approach, at least until you click on a link…
12.12.2013
Arunoda Susiripala
Yes, you can track it when google’s caching server initially cache the image. I’m not sure google cache images when the email is received into gmail server or when the first time user open the email.
If it is the first case, you can’t track open email.
If it’s the latter, yes its possible.
12.12.2013
Jay Pinho
Matthew,
Thanks for the post. I’m curious whether there’s any way for you to use a cache-busting random-number generator in your emails, so the pixel loads anew every time? (I’m guessing you’d need a macro for that, which wouldn’t be accessible from within the email.) Just a thought.
Jay
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Jay, We’re definitely looking at how things are working and what may or may not need changed. That being said, Google hasn’t given a definitive time on how long they’ll cache information, but our tests seem to show that, at least for now, it’s fairly short lived.
12.13.2013
Nirav
What if google loads the pixel and caches it beforehand of user opening up the email? Do you guys count this as a ‘open’ in this case?
Thanks,
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Nirav, So far, our testing shows that the Google isn’t actually caching anything until the user clicks to open the email. At that point, Google loads up the images and returns them to the subscriber via their proxy servers.
12.13.2013
Pete
Not only do you need to stay on top of pre-caching by Google, but you’ll also need to stay on top of cache optimization, meaning, Google will probably only store 1 copy of an image; it wouldn’t make sense in large campaigns to its users to store a million copies of the same image. I imagine an image will be cached with the url as the key.
12.13.2013
Sebastian Sito
And why are You so sure that Google wouldn’t cache the images even if user don’t want to open the email?
Consider situation where user gets 3 similar emails and open only 2 of them. Google perhaps can be smart enough to preload content of 3rd one as it’s very likely that user can hit this email too.
So, You’re not sure. It’s just a assumption.
And as a side note – email wasn’t designed for tracking. Commerce wants to be everywhere and that’s a shame.
12.13.2013
Mike
Hi Matthew,
I have recently read a blog of a competitor who claim to have a working solution for gross openings for Gmails new image caching and they will deploy it soon.
Could we expect something similar from you guys?
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Mike, Not sure what’s in process at this point as things are definitely in a transitional phase while Google rolls these changes out. If any changes are made, we’ll post them here and make sure you’re kept up to date. Stay tuned.
12.13.2013
Rena
Sounds like they’d cache every image whether the email ever gets opened or not. That would plug the “unique image URL to track each message” hole. Otherwise, why bother to cache at all?
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Rena, I’m not sure I’m understanding what you’re referring to in the “unique image URL” part. That being said, I can tell you that in our testing so far, it doesn’t appear that Google is caching images until they are opened for the first time. At the point of “open” it looks like they’re caching, and then serving the images from their servers. This of course would still allow for the unique open tracking, but may impact the tracking of multiple opens for the same subscriber.
12.13.2013
CaqKa
what if gmail would scan email, and determine which are from the same campaing and then replace the pixel in all mails from the campaing with just one picture… we would always get just 1 open on an entire campaign…
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
I understand what you’re getting at, but the images are dynamically created and unique to each subscriber, so I don’t think that’d be a concern in this case.
12.13.2013
Nirav
This would work given google doesn’t load and pre-cache images. Also, open tracker graphic, or web beacon, is unique to each campaign you send. Have you guys made it user specific now?
Thanks,
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Nirav, The pixel tracking is also unique down to the user level as well. We’re doing some additional testing, but it appears the actual caching doesn’t occur until the moment the email is opened for the first time.
12.13.2013
Giles Rafol
Just saw this on Ars Technica. Came right here, knowing you guys would be covering this. Thanks for the info.
12.13.2013
ZN
Curious if you have tested setting no cache/expires headers on the beacon to see if Google still caches the beacon. I’d expect Google to honor the http headers.
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Not a bad thought, but in our testing it does appear Google is ignoring all caching control settings for images.
12.13.2013
Dhruv
What’s the guarantee that gmail/google will download the image for the first time only if the user views the email? Couldn’t they unconditionally always download the image no-matter-what? Or even better, randomly choose whether to download an image or not just to throw trackers off?
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Dhruv, I guess that’s always a possibility, but I don’t think it’s really something to worry too much about at this point. If you take a look at their recent help doc on choosing to modify the auto-load of images, you’ll see down towards the bottom that unique image tracking links will probably still work. We’ve been testing and evidence would seem to support that as well.
12.13.2013
Dhruv
Thanks John!
12.13.2013
Dennis
John/Mathew, please could you clarify whether Google caches the images on receipt of email or on actual open? Hahaha – just kidding, you guys must be getting tired of answering that one!
Seriously, a very comprehensive & helpful post, thanks :)
12.13.2013
abhishek shah
So isnt this gr8 news for marketers as images will now auto load and the segment of non openers will go down? The whole of non openers is solved now isnt it? This is brilliant news!
12.13.2013
Tony Martin
So, what happens in the following scenarios:
-Gmail User A receives marketing message1 with 1×1 tracking image. The user opens the message and then forwards it to Gmail User B. What happens when Gmail User B opens it?
-Gmail User A receives marketing message1 with 1×1 tracking image. The user opens the message and then forwards it to Yahoo User B. What happens when Yahoo User B opens it?
-Tony
12.13.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Tony, I gotta tell you, this one surprised me, but to answer your question. I have no clue. I have a theory, but without testing I wouldn’t even venture a guess. Stay tuned. I’ll get you an answer soon.
12.13.2013
Peg
If I’m understanding correctly, I have done something similar. I have forwarded an email that I received from a campaign that I sent out (myself being a subscriber to the newsletter I sent out). I noticed that I got the credit for opening the newsletter instead of the person who I forwarded it to. I also received credit for opening it when it was actually opened by me.
01.17.2014
John MailChimp
Hi Peg, This is slightly different from the initial question, but you are correct. If you were to forward an email received by you to someone else or even 10 other people and they all opened it, these would all show as additional opens for you in the reports. This is because the web beacon included in the email is specific to you and forwarding won’t make any changes to the web beacon. One way around this would be if you were to include a Forward to a Friend merge tag within your campaign and person forwarding were to forward using the link rather than forwarding via the email client. Hopefully that makes it a bit clearer, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at: http://mailchimp.com/chat and they’ll also be happy to help.
01.17.2014
Peg
I forgot to mention that I am Yahoo but I don’t remember what the others to whom I forwarded were. But I think it would be the same no matter who I forwarded it to. I would be the one getting the open credit.
01.17.2014
John MailChimp
You’re absolutely correct Peg.
01.17.2014
Stephen Lasseter
IIRC I saw an article on how Facebook was using small audio files played at low (essentially no) volume to call back to the server.
If Google doesnt cache those audio files perhaps you could switch over to a similar method if it is still viable.
Lasseter
12.13.2013
Luke
@John great replies, having to repeat the same answer over and over again must be fun :) I guess people can’t be bothered to read your first answer.
12.14.2013
Grant E
Something I don’t think I’ve heard yet is whether automatically loading images is going to put users at risk for phishing scams? If a spammer sends an email, they open it not knowing it’s a scam and Google feeds up the image and then the spammer tracks the open and now confirms my email address is real.
12.15.2013
Manuel
Nice article, helped a lot and safed me time testing it myself. I guess you keep as posted if google changes anything on image caching?
What about link click tracking? I’d expeced google to crawl urls to ensure they are spam or malicious free? Is link tracking fully functional on gmail? How is it with other providers?
12.17.2013
John MailChimp
Hi Manuel, Click tracking on images shouldn’t be affected at all by these changes. I’m not sure of the specifics of how it all it works, but Google does do some checking on that already to help detect phishing and other nefarious things.
12.18.2013
Joe
@Luke seriously, that is some of the best patience I’ve ever seen! I read the entire thread of comments and just kept chuckling to myself.
12.17.2013
Toon
So, all those tracking pixels are unique? Like tiny little one-dimemsional yet infinitely varied people? That’s beautiful.
12.19.2013
John MailChimp
You are correct! :-D
12.19.2013
Ruben Reyes
I wonder why didn’t Google enabled some kind of tagging to indicate that an image should not be cached. They could have done something like adding a parameter “nocache” to the tag that you want to use for tracking and force such image to be no larger than a certain size (pixels or bytes).
01.02.2014
Rafael Ocaña
Hi, John, I am concerned on two points. I apologize if anyone has already commented on it but I couldn’t find it:
1.I’ve seen a degraded gif on an email I sent. Does google recompress the images? I am very pixel obsessed and work my best to make state of the art optimization.
2. Also, I am concerned that if i have to update an image hosted on a server (eg., if I ever detect an error, i can re-upload the image and gmail would reload it.), gmail will display the cached image, not the actual image. That is a big problem if you are in a hurry to send an email, or if you want to make a correction.
HELP! And thanks a lot for your patience!
01.06.2014
John MailChimp
Hi Rafael, I’ve not done any testing on the image compressing to know when and/or what gets compressed, but it does appear that at least some images are getting compressed. Something to keep an eye on for sure. Maybe one of the guys will dig in and take a closer look. Replacing images in an email that’s already been sent is less than ideal, but of course you’re correct, the caching of those images by Google could complicate matters a bit more. I’d always recommend taking advantage of both the test emails and the collaborative features to try to minimize those urgent scenarios as much as possible.
01.10.2014
Alan
Thank you so much for this information.
01.11.2014
FBBENV
I am interested in the portion in the help doc that says the following:
Some senders try to use externally linked images in harmful ways, but Gmail takes action to ensure that images are loaded safely. Gmail serves all images through Google’s image proxy servers and transcodes them before delivery to protect you in the following ways:
•Senders can’t use image loading to get information like your IP address or location.
•Senders can’t set or read cookies in your browser.
•Gmail checks your images for known viruses or malware.
How can users be tracked if “senders can’t set or read cookies in your browser” –
01.16.2014
John MailChimp
You’ll probably want to take a look at the following article: http://eepurl.com/AZg1P that explains a little more on how we do open tracking. The short answer is that the web beacon is unique to each subscriber that receives the email. We track based off of the open of the web beacon and not via cookies.
01.17.2014
Chelsea
John deserves a raise.
01.23.2014
Ben MailChimp
Duly noted. In fact, a screenshot of this entire comment thread will be copy-pasted into his employee file (this goes on your “permanent record” John!).
01.24.2014
DL
What about Gmail users who change their settings back to “Ask before displaying external images”. Do you know whether Gmail caches the beacon when the mail is open, or do they wait until the user clicks “display images below”?
01.25.2014
John MailChimp
If I’m understanding the question correctly, in the case of setting back to “ask before displaying…” should result in the same open tracking as could be expected prior to all these changes. Meaning, without images displaying, the open wouldn’t be tracked, but as soon as the images are loaded, the open would also be recorded.
01.30.2014
CaqKa
I recently also see, a big change in the demographic data.
Previously i had 80% of users from my country, now all the sudden more than half are from USA.
01.29.2014
Robin
I apologize in advance if this has already been brought up in the comments.
As of today, it doesn’t seem that tracking opens works for gmail. In a test I just did, Mailchimp did not recognize an open in gmail until I actually clicked on the “view in browser” link. Before that MailChimp stated that the user had not opened the email, even though I clearly had.
I’m wondering what MailChimp is planning to do about this. Are you brainstorming solutions, working with Google, or have you concluded there is nothing to be done?
01.31.2014
John MailChimp
Hi Robin, That’s not a behavior we’ve spotted at this point, but I’ll dig in and do some further testing and also check with the team here. I’ll let you know what I find. Thanks.
01.31.2014
John MailChimp
I’ve checked here and there, and still have not been able to duplicate what you’re describing Robin. If you’re still seeing this behavior, would you mind reaching out to our support team at: http://mailchimp.com/chat so they could investigate a bit further for you?
02.10.2014
Susan
Hi John and Mailchimp
I’ve been trying to understand for awhile –what’s up with multiple opens per unique recipient?
Sometimes I’ll see 10+, but recently I saw one recipient with 100+ opens! It seems unlikely that this person actually opened the same email that many times.
Is this a bug with tracking, or does it indicate something else?
Thanks in advance for the education!
03.20.2014
Ben MailChimp
When you see anomalies like that, it’s usually because someone forwarded the email to a bunch of friends, or posted the email online somewhere, and 100 new people opened.
03.26.2014
Blair
I’ve just read this entire thread. John, you are an inspiration. I am going to be a better person from now on.
01.30.2015
Steve
Hello! I was just wondering if there’s been any further update to this data, seeing how it’s Mid-2015? I’m wondering if open rates have declined now because of tabs, now that they aren’t so much of a new thing?
06.30.2015
Matthew MailChimp
Hey Steve, I’m interested in this data as well, but I think it may be impossible to track down. Back when Gmail introduced tabs, they were also turning off all images in emails by default. When Gmail started caching images, they made sure images were now showing as soon as users opened their emails. Because we track opens using a small one pixel image, any difference we see in open rates today would be massively skewed by that default behavior.
07.07.2015