Tracking emails with Seen receipts
Overview
Email tracking is a feature that allows you to see whether your customer has viewed the message you've sent them. In order to track emails, we use an invisible tracking pixel in your outbound messages to determine whether a message has been viewed.
Instructions
Step 1
Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the the Company or Personal settings tab, depending on which space you are working with.
Step 2
Click Inboxes in the left menu, and select the inbox containing the channel you'd like to edit. Tracking is only available for email channels.
Step 3
Click the Channels tab at the top, then click the channel.
Step 4
Toggle on the Track sent emails setting.
Step 5
When your message has been viewed, a Seen bubble will appear on the message. Clicking the receipt will show you when the recipient viewed the message.
FAQ
Why doesn't the Seen receipt show the date?
If the Seen receipt was from the previous day, it won't show the date until it's been more than 24 hours.
Why do I see multiple copies sent in Gmail?
When sending a message to multiple recipients, Front will send one message for each recipient but displays it as if it has been sent to all recipients. However, if you use Gmail with Front, beware that Gmail's sent folder will show that you've sent the same email multiple times to the same recipient. Be assured that each recipient only receives one copy of the message.
Why don't I see the Seen receipt?
If you don't see the Seen receipt, it could be due to your recipient's settings. The Seen receipt is based on an invisible, one-pixel, tracking image that's loaded by the recipient. If they have automatic loading of images disabled, Front will not receive a notification that the message was seen, so the Seen receipt will not show.
Why are my messages always marked as Seen immediately?
Similar to the above point, this is likely due to your recipient's mail client settings. One cause of this can be due to a safety feature offered by many mail providers known as "image proxies" whereby the receiving mail server will immediately download images on the received message; this will trigger the message to be marked as Seen in Front on receipt.
Why don't I see the names on the Seen receipt?
There are two possible reasons for this:
- If you have 4 or less recipients on a single message, Front will track each recipient separately, and display each name and timestamp. If there are 5 or more recipients, Front will only display the read timestamps, without names.
- Office 365 channels are not able to track multiple recipients due to limitations in sending through their API. Generic tracking will still work, displaying only the read timestamps, without names.
What about Apple Mail recipients?
Apple Mail has a feature in which their servers automatically download all images in an email, as part of their Mail Privacy Protection update. This means that if your recipient has this feature turned on in their Apple Mail settings, Front's tracking pixel will always be downloaded and you will see a Seen receipt for these recipients, even if they have not opened your message. In these cases, be aware that the Seen receipt may not always be reliable due to your recipient's Apple Mail settings.
22 replies
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Hi Cori Morris before Front we were using Gmelius and not only showed if the message is viewed but also (by default) blocked all incoming email tracking pixels. Is this something you guys are working on?
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Rolf Dröge Not at this time, but I'll share your request with our product team.
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Hi Cori Morris another really nice feature for the "analytics dashboard" would be to see if (and which) messages have been opened or not. (TBH) an overview of unopened messages is more useful than a graph with open rates.
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Rolf Dröge Noted 😀
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Hi Cori , it's me again (sorry): Is it possible to see the specific date (xx/xx/xxxx) when an email is marked as "Seen"? At the moment I can only see Mon XX:XX or Tue XX:XX but I don't know if this was a week or two/three weeks ago.
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Rolf Dröge No problem at all! If it's been more than 1 week, it will show the date.
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Is there any way to pull the analytics of "seen" vs. "unseen" messages? Or is there any way to take a look at open rates?
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Hi Cori Morris do you know if it will be possible to get an overview of recently 'seen' tracked emails in Front analytics?
A more light-weight-feature to set a notification if specific emails are 'opened / seen'?
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Another vote here to see the seen receipt data in the analytics. It would be very useful to know what percentage of our email were read.
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Cori Morris I'm noticing Seen Receipts are not available in the API. What is the reasoning of not exposing the api to the feature?
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Boudewijn This isn't supported with our API at present, but we have added a +1 vote for this feature request to our product team. We'll let you know when this becomes a capability with Front's API.
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Hi Cori Morris we are very interested in implementing a pixel-blocker. Have you had any updates in this feature? Looking forward to using it in our accounts.
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Carolina Bautista Hi there! Can you clarify what you want to implement? You can turn off tracking directly from your inbox settings as shown above in Step 3. That will disable the tracking pixel that Front automatically enables. Is that what you're looking for?
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Hi I was wondering if there are any updates on the Receipt data?
Another use case: for sales it’s very insightful if I can see / get a notification when an email has been opened so I can send a follow-up emails at the right time. -
Hi Rolf Dröge I'm afraid at present, it isn't possible to be notified on seen receipt confirmations or have this included in analytics. I've added a +1 vote for both of these feature requests to our product team. We'll be sure to let you know as soon as anything changes!
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Why 4 people only? We send emails to lists containing of hundreds of recipients. We only get something random like seen 80 times. I cannot tell if that's one person who has seen it 80 times or 80 people who saw it once each. And who are the people who saw it? The feedback the app give is pointless. This limitation is frustrating... compounded by the lack of ability to do any analysis as other users have suggested here. Make that +1 for a modification of how seen receipts are handled.
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Ziad Thanks for your feedback. This is a technical limitation implemented to prevent overwhelming our mail servers (or connected mail servers) when sending outbound mail. I'll share your feedback with our Product team, and see if there is anything we can do to improve this feature in a future version of Front
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Is there a way to enable tracking on specific emails only? I don't want to track everything I send, but it could be a good thing in specific cases.
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Thibaut Tiberghien Hey Thibaut! Currently there is not a way to selectively turn on/off seen receipts for certain emails or contacts. We do have a feature request for this though, and I've added your upvote!
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Lily Carter thanks Lily.
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A notification when an email is "seen" would be really useful. Even more if useful if can be enabled per email.
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Irving Mercedes thanks for the feedback, we'll share this with our product team!
