Open Rate Logistics

Nate Kriha

Hey everyone!


I am lacking a firm understanding on the open rate logistics for Luminate Online. In order for a user to have an email count as "opened," do they need to download that email's pictures? Or do they simply click on the email in their inbox?


I have come across several conflicting viewpoints regarding this topic. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Brian Mucha

My understanding is they have to accept images. Remember that pretty much all email clients do not support Javascript, so how can the email possibly tell me if it was opened?


It's pretty ingenious. This tracking works by adding a single pixel transparent gif to your email that passes the id of the recipient as a parameter.


Something sort of like this: <img src="hiddenimage.gif?id=123456" />


So you send me an email. When I open it, my email client sends a request to the Luminate server for that image. Luminate knows it was me by the passed Id, and so it can record an open. (It's undoubtedly more complicated than that, but this is essentially the way it works.)


Even more cool, some tracking systems serve that single pixel REALLY slowly. It might take 90 seconds or more for that pixel to come over. If I close the email before that happens, the server knows that the request was ended, and therefore it knows how long I was reading the email for. Neat, right?


And any request to a server communicates some standard info, stuff like the time, IP address, browser type, and OS of the requestor. So you can find out where your readers are located, how many are on mobile, etc.


We use Litmus, which tracks and reports a ton more than the stock Luminate reporting, all by tracking and inferring as much as they can from the single pixel request.


Brian

Nate Kriha

Thank you so much for the thoughtful response, Brian! This made things so much clearer for me.