I’ve been using the Outlook Connector to send emails no problems for a number of years. However, in the last month, every single email I send is being tracked as opened at the same time I sent it.
I’d love to think all the recipients are opening my emails immediately, but I know this is not the case as I have received a few out-of-office messages and an auto reply saying the email address is no longer valid!
Other colleagues are having no issues at all - their email open rates are as expected.
Anyone else experience this and have a fix?
Hi @AngelaBall,
Thanks for reaching out to the Community!
I wanted to share this knowledge base article on the current behavior of email opens and clicks:
- Email opens: HubSpot embeds an invisible one-pixel image into the email message once it is sent. When your recipient views the email and the invisible one-pixel image loads, the email open is recorded.
- Email clicks, it happens as long as there are clicks on the hyperlinked text within the email
Some contacts’ email clients could have a certain filter or security feature which scans an email for safety purposes. This behavior can cause the tracking pixel to load and this may be interpreted as an email open by HubSpot.
Another potential reason could be the preview pane feature in email clients such as Outlook or Apple Mail. These two email clients have a preview pane as part of the inbox view. If recipients scroll over your email in their inbox, this can also trigger an email open notification.
Finally, iOS 15 and up has made it harder to track email opens. You can read more about the impact of iOS 15 and up on email opens and suggestions on other metrics to consider in this blog post.
I also wanted to share this related thread where @karstenkoehler outlines the potential reasons for these email opens and ways to remedy these email open notifications.
I hope this helps!
Best,
Kristen
Hi Kristen,
I have no idea why this is not working for me - others in my organisation are fine with the same settings. It’s been working correctly for me for literally years. Its only in the last month that every one of my emails is registering as opened, even though I know they are not all being read.
Something has changed somewhere to cause this - I dont know if it is a Windows update but I just cant seem to fix it.
Hi @AngelaBall,
Thanks for reaching back out!
Most of the email open issues are related to how the tracking pixel is being loaded in the external environment so it can be hard to investigate.
I would recommend taking a look at this article here to block self-open email notifications and see if this affects the metric.
If you receive more email open notifications than expected for a specific tracked email, it may indicate that the email was forwarded or that you copied and pasted a previously sent email. Because of privacy and security concerns, when an email is forwarded, HubSpot defaults to telling you that the original sender opened the email again.
If you keep seeing issues after trying out the steps, I would recommend connecting with HubSpot Technical Support, as Support is included in your subscription. They will be able to provide real-time assistance for this matter where you can share specific email examples and email headers for the team to take a look.
Best,
Kristen