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Track deleted emails

  • September 22, 2020
  • 4 replies
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pamela_mackie
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In Journey Orchestrator, is there a way to track if an email is deleted before it has been read?

I think it would be a good feature to have where you can see if emails that have not been opened, have been deleted instead.

Best answer by dan_ahrens

@pamela_mackie - a little background on how email tracking works to know if an email is opened might help. The most common method is to insert a tiny image (usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel) into the email body that is too small for anyone to see, but when the email is opened, this image is loaded from the sender’s web server, which creates the equivalent of a tracking record. 

 

However if the email is never opened, that tiny tracking image is never rendered, so it’s impossible to know if the email was deleted before it was read or if it is still unopened in the inbox. 

 

One question for you - from an informational perspective, is there much of a difference between an email that is deleted before it is opened versus an email that is not deleted but remains unopened in the recipients inbox? In both cases the email is not opened or read. 

4 replies

nitisha_rathi
  • nitisha_rathi
  • Expert ⭐️⭐️
  • January 22, 2021

@pamela_mackie This is very difficult to achieve since this data lives in email client and usually email client don’t add ways to access such information. In the future, we will explore if there is a possibility to achieve this.

Thanks for sharing.

john_apple
dan_ahrens
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  • dan_ahrens
  • Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • Answer
  • January 22, 2021

@pamela_mackie - a little background on how email tracking works to know if an email is opened might help. The most common method is to insert a tiny image (usually 1 pixel by 1 pixel) into the email body that is too small for anyone to see, but when the email is opened, this image is loaded from the sender’s web server, which creates the equivalent of a tracking record. 

 

However if the email is never opened, that tiny tracking image is never rendered, so it’s impossible to know if the email was deleted before it was read or if it is still unopened in the inbox. 

 

One question for you - from an informational perspective, is there much of a difference between an email that is deleted before it is opened versus an email that is not deleted but remains unopened in the recipients inbox? In both cases the email is not opened or read. 

VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
john_apple
pamela_mackie
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  • pamela_mackie
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  • Contributor ⭐️⭐️
  • January 25, 2021

Hi Dan,

 

Thanks for the explanation on this.

I think there could be some use to see if an email was deleted compared to unopened.

If an email is unopened it might mean that the email address is incorrect/no longer used.

With regards to the image that is inserted in certain emails, some email clients will warn you if an email comes from outside of your organization and they will not load all images by default. I would assume that for this case the inserted image would not load, so it would count as an unopened email also.

If an email is deleted before it is opened then it might mean that the contact is not interested in receiving emails from us. Some deeper analysis could possibly be taken from this if the data was available...is the contact deleting all emails (you would hope that they unsubscribe in this case), are they deleting only some (is it specific ones that they are deleting and they do not have the correct options on their preferences to only receive the emails that they want).

 

 

sai_ram
dan_ahrens
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  • dan_ahrens
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  • January 25, 2021

Also, keep in mind that if the email address is incorrect or invalid, the email server will send back a specific error message which is trackable. 

VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
sai_ram
pamela_mackie
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