In some Email service like Outlook and Exchange, you can request a read receipt; i.e. every time the recipient opens your email; you’ll get a confirmation reply. Sadly, there is no such option in Gmail. But the good news is, you can use third-party apps to find out if the email you sent was opened or not. And out of many such services, I recommend MailTrack.
MailTrack is a chrome extension for tracking Emails. But what makes it stand out from the rest is — it’s not only free and easy to use, but it also reveals how many times and on which device an email was opened. The only feature missing in MailTrack is the location (i.e. where the email was opened). Though if you want that, use Hubspot Email tracker. All the other features are the same except for this one. Video: Find Out If The Email You Sent Was Opened
So, how does Email tracking works? These programs send a tiny image (almost invisible) inside your email body, and when the recipient opens the email, that small image logs a hit on its server and report metadata like time, location, and device ID, etc. Setup To get started with email tracking, all you have to do is install MailTrack Chrome extension, link it to your Google account from where you will be sending emails. And that’s it; MailTrack will start tracking every email you sent. To check if your emails were read or not, open your email account and go to Sent Mails. There you’ll see read receipt in front of email.
If you don’t want to tracker a particular email, just disable MailTrack by clicking the check marks at the bottom of the content area. For more information on MailTrack, I suggest you watch the video at the top of this article How to tell if someone is tracking me? If you want to check, if the email you are getting contains a tracking image here is how to check. Click on the drop-down arrow near the email body > Show Original > press CMD + F or CTRL + F to bring up Find option and search for keywords like — png, track, etc.
If there is a tracking image, this should show up in the source code of the email. Is there a way to read track email without letting the sender know? There are a couple of ways to open a possible tracked email, without letting the sender that you have open it. For instance: you can-
Disable image loading on Gmail. Open the email in plain HTML Use plugin like Ghostery.
Email tracking is also not 100% accurate. There are slight changes in false positive. For instance — some email client automatically loads the image even before the recipient has open the message. Also Read: How to Quickly Unsubscribe From Bulk Mail Wrapping up Email tracking is a useful tool for businesses but not advisable for personal use, for various reasons, like — It can lead to trust issue and giving a third party tool access to your Email is not really a good idea. Also, remember, if you planning to uninstall any Email tracking extension, do not just remove it from your chrome. Make sure to revoke the app access to your Gmail account by going to Google account settings.
