With remote working, you are quite familiar with the idea of Zoom meetings, Microsoft Teams conference, Google Meet interviews, and Skype calls, right? Now imagine you have to present a business proposal but the board of directors do not switch on their video. How does it feel to talk about something so important to a screen where you can hardly figure out how the listeners are responding to your speech? Frustrating, isn’t it?
That’s exactly how it feels when you have your entire email marketing strategy in place but don’t know how your recipients are reacting to the communication. Email tracking comes into the picture here. Tracking eliminates the ‘guesswork’ and lets you know whether your readers are liking your content or not.
Just like segmentation, personalization, and automation,
First of all, we shall discuss the advantages of email tracking.
Why is Email Tracking Important?
Email tracking, as the name suggests, allows you to track whether the recipient has opened your email, clicked on the link in it, or downloaded the rate card you shared with it. In addition, you can also get real-time notifications when a user interacts with your email and when you should follow-up with them. It gives you a holistic view about the behavior of prospects. Based on these details, you can keep optimizing your emails for better results.
The advantages of email tracking are:
1. It helps to save time.
Suppose you have sent a lead nurturing email to your prospects. Now, if a user has not opened the first email, there is no point sending the second email to them. You should send follow-up emails only to the subscribers who have opened the previous email. Thus, email tracking helps to save time, both for the marketer and the email subscriber. If your analytics report shows that a subscriber is clicking on the links and spending enough time reading your emails, you can conveniently assume that they are interested in learning more about you.
2. Email tracking gives unique insights into how the subscribers are interacting with your emails.
With email tracking, you can create a robust email marketing plan by understanding how a user is interacting with the content. For instance, you can track the time when the user generally opens your emails and reach out to them in that time frame. It will make your emails all the more relevant for the readers, which will in turn increase the likelihood of conversion.
3. Tracking will allow you to maintain a healthy email list
Based on the performance of your past emails, you can segment the subscribers based on their activity. You can formulate a re-engagement email strategy for the dormant subscribers and persuade them to take action. If they still seem disinterested and do not open your emails, you can send them a last email like Kloos has sent.
You can, then, remove the users who are still inactive. After all, you would not want to email people who are not going to buy from you.
4. Advanced analytics will aid in reduction of unsubscribes and spam complaints
Predictive analytics will conclude which subscribers are most likely to make the purchase and who will possibly churn. Accordingly, you can send out tailormade emails that will perform better and support your business growth.
There are several tools like Saleshub and Mailtrack that help you with email tracking. Let’s make a list of all the popular email tracking tools.
- Email Tracker for Gmail – Mailtrack
If you are using a Gmail email address like support-bizname@gmail.com, you can use Mailtrack to keep a tab on our emails. It comes as a Google Chrome extension that gives you real-time notifications when a user opens your email. With the free version of the tool, you get unlimited tracking with daily reports, email alerts, and follow-up alerts for all devices, including iPhone and Android phone. More detailed reporting will be available in the Pro and Advanced version of the tool. You can purchase the advanced version of this tool for as low as $30 per year.
2. Saleshandy
Saleshandy gives you unlimited tracking for your email outreach and allows you to save time with personalized automated follow-ups. For marketers who are looking for comprehensive reports and email marketing strategy, Saleshandy is the perfect tool. It is available for Gmail as well as Outlook. By measuring the recipient’s interest level, you can focus on the people who are most interested to buy from you.
3. Leadboxer
Leadboxer is a Sales Enablement solution that offers many other features apart from email tracking. This tool identifies the visitors on your website and helps you create segments with filters so that you can focus on your target audience. It will carry out lead scoring for a prospect according to the most relevant parameters so that you do not have to intervene to pick out the hot leads. You will receive real-time updates and email notifications when a lead visits your website or reads the emails.
4. Streak
Streak is just like a spreadsheet integrated into Gmail. It will help you stay organized and work as a dashboard providing every detail about the client interactions. You can integrate it into G Suite and Zapier or build custom integrations for the internal systems.
Here’s how the pipeline data will look like:
5. Saleshub by HubSpot
Saleshub by HubSpot is a tracking tool that is compatible with Gmail, Outlook, and Office 365. It lets you know when a prospect opens your email, clicks on a link in it, or downloads an attachment. The tool will give you desktop notifications in real time so that you can instantly respond to the leads and increase the likelihood of conversion or receiving a response.
Check out how the interface looks like:
6. Mailtracker by Hunter.io
Trusted by brands like Microsoft and IBM, Mailtracker gives you all the basic insights like when the emails are opened. Accordingly, you can devise your follow-up strategy. The tool works as a free Google Chrome extension. Unlike the free version of Mailtrack, it does not add any signature to the email.
How to Enable Email Tracking?
Tracking an email through your email client is pretty straightforward. You just need to install the tool or Chrome extension on your system and you are good to go.
Let’s see the four easy steps in which you can track your emails.
- Choose an email tracking tool that matches your requirements
There are several email tracking software programs available in the digital marketplace. You must choose the one that fits in your budget and suits your email client and professional requirements. For example: Mailtrack will allow you to track emails sent only through Gmail. If you are looking for email tracking in Outlook, you can go for Saleshub, the tracking tool by HubSpot.
- Install the tool
After shortlisting the tool, you have to install the tool on your system. Check the settings if you want to enable live notifications for your prospect activity.
- Go to your email interface
Once you have installed the tool, you can start composing your email. If you are using Saleshub, you will be able to see all the details about the recipient as shown in the screenshot below:
This reduces the likelihood of making any personalization errors in the email. It will help you draft more effective communications that are sure to bring results.
- Check the tracking settings
You have to activate the tool to make sure that it tracks the emails and provides you the necessary insights.
Here’s how you can enable tracking with Mailtrack.
The tool works by adding a 1×1 pixel image to the body of the email. As soon as the user opens it, the browser will request for the image from the host server. After the request is parsed, it will indicate that the email is opened.
You can take the help of this tool to give a leg up to your link-building efforts and recruitment strategy. Startups can also use it for their sales and marketing endeavors.
Limitations of Email Tracking Tools
- Many email tracking tools (like the free version of Mailtrack) do not allow you to track emails sent to groups. As a result, you may have to send the emails individually, which can be extremely time consuming.
- Some email tracking software programs do not recognize the difference between an email preview and email open. Consequently, you will get incorrect tracking results.
- Outlook does not load images as long as the default settings are not reset. The tracking extension adds a 1×1 tracking pixel so you might not be able to figure out whether the email was opened or not.
- Last but not the least, the most important roadblock to tracking is browser extensions like Pixelblock. They do not allow the tracking tool to work. As a result, you will not be able to get correct email analytics.
Despite all these limitations, you should not disregard the importance of email tracking.
Wrapping Up
Ending this article with an important clarification:
There are two perspectives to email tracking. One of them is the practice shared in this article. Another is a more exhaustive tracking that enterprise owners and marketers of larger companies use. It encompasses metrics like:
- Open Rate
- Click-through Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Overall ROI
- List Growth Rate
- Email Forwarding Rate
We will soon write a detailed guide on these metrics. Wait for it…
If you do not like waiting, you can check this out:
https://email.uplers.com/blog/essentials-email-marketing-metrics/https://www.singlegrain.com/email-marketing/email-campaign/
Till then, happy emailing and tracking!