You targeted the right audience and personalized your cold email, but still aren't getting replies?
There's a high chance that your prospects didn't even open your email.
If you don't know if someone read your email, you won't know whether to follow up and might miss new business opportunities.
In this article, you'll find out how to see if someone read your email so you can track your progress, follow up more effectively, and boost your reply chances!
A read receipt is a notification confirming that your prospect received and opened your email.
Read receipts can appear as a pop-up notification when the recipient opens the email, requesting them to give immediate feedback. This method can be much more privacy-friendly, as your recipient will see straight off the bat that you are tracking that information.
Here's how to activate it in different email providers:
→ How to add a read receipt in Gmail
[ ] Login to your Gmail account
⬇️
Compose a new email
⬇️
More Options
⬇️
"Request read receipt"
P.S. This option only works for a G-Suite account linked to a business or organization.
→ How to add a read receipt in Outlook
[ ] Log into your Outlook account
⬇️
Compose a new email
⬇️
More Options "
⬇️
Request a Read Receipt"
Read receipts are a common way to check if your recipient has read or not your email, here are the things we like and dislike about using them ⬇️
You can use a Chrome extension to track your email open rates.
You can install these extensions directly into your web browser. The extension will then automatically include a tracking pixel within the body of the email.
Once the email has been opened, you will receive a notification where you can also check out when exactly it was opened. Therefore keeping good track of who could use a follow-up and when.
Check out some of our favorites ⬇️
→ MailTrack
→ Free Email Tracker by cloudHQ
→ Email Tracker by Mailtag
While Chrome extension are very easy to use and require little to no set up, they still have their downsides.
The best way to track your campaign performance is by using email automation software, such as lemlist.
It allows you to send, manage, and track all your campaigns from the same spot, which saves you hours of manual work and boosts your outreach efficiency.
In a single interface, lemlist users can see:
→ how many leads received their emails, how many opened, clicked, replied, and how many are interested
→ data for LinkedIn steps: how many invites (or connection requests) were sent, how many LinkedIn profiles they visited, and how many messages were sent
→ if API steps are included in a campaign, they will also appear in the results
You can also switch to the negative metrics of your campaigns to access the number of emails that bounced, the number of leads that are not interested, and how many of them unsubscribed.
These metrics can help you spot any deliverability issues and take steps to ensure your emails always land in your prospects' inboxes.
Tracking these metrics is important, as that's how you'll see if your campaigns are successful.
Your metrics will give you insights into what you should change to improve your results.
You can test it out for free and always know your campaign status to approach your prospects best and boost your replies.
A useful method for all coding pros out there is using an image tag in an HTML email.
Image tags in HTML can work as email tracking pixels, meaning that once the email has been opened the image will automatically be downloaded, and will send a notification to the sender tracking the date and time of when the recipient opened the email.
Image tags and Chrome extensions work in a very similar way, except that with image tags you have to embed the code directly within the body of the email.
If you’re worried about affecting your overall message or you’re just not a big fan of using images, don’t worry. Your image can be a small white square so it becomes invisible.
There are a few tips you should keep in mind to ensure that you’re not violating your recipient's privacy or risking your own information:
Tracking if someone reads your email helps you plan your follow-up approach to increase your chances of getting a reply.
For example, you can test different subject lines if your prospects don't find the current one catchy enough to open your emails.
But remember that the open rates aren't the only thing that should define the overall success of your outreach.
Check out what other metrics to track if you want to boost your outreach results and open new business opportunities. 🚀
Yes, there are a few more methods you can use to track if your emails have been read or not. Our personal favorite, you guessed it, are automation tools. In a single interface, you can keep track of all your relevant metrics, such as opened emails among others.
Yes, the recipient can receive a popup notification requesting them to give immediate feedback. Some users find this intrusive and annoying.
Yes, if done correctly, tracking read emails is ethical. However, if you border on intrusive or do not do your set up correctly (particularly with image tags) you could bump into privacy issues.
Yes, recipients can block the automatic downloading of images which will seriously impact the collection of data using image tags and/or Chrome Extensions.
It is important to keep track of what emails have been opened in order to plan a follow-up strategy accordingly. It would make little to no sense to barrage your targets with an endless string of emails if they’re not opening them to start with.
You will also be able to judge if there is an issue (in your writing or deliverability) and adjust accordingly to ensure that you have successful campaigns.