How do open and click tracking work in a campaign?
Open the campaign, go to Settings and find the Tracking section. It has three switches: Send as plain text only, Track opens and Track clicks. For a new campaign, Track clicks is on, Track opens is off and plain text is off. The section only appears on campaigns that send email.
#What each switch does
Track clicks. "See when a lead clicks a link in your email." Warmerly rewrites each link so it goes through a tracking address first, records the click, then sends the person on to your real page. The recipient sees a slightly different link if they hover over it.
Track opens. "See when a lead opens your email." Warmerly adds a tiny invisible image to the email. When the recipient's email app loads the image, the open is recorded. Some email apps block images or load them automatically, so open numbers are a rough guide, not a count of people. That is why open tracking is off by default. The hidden image is also one of the more reliable signs of bulk email to spam filters.
Send as plain text only. Removes the HTML version of the email entirely. There is no tracking image, no rewritten links and no formatted signature (the signature is HTML). This is usually the biggest single improvement to inbox placement for cold outreach, at the cost of open and click tracking. While it is on, the two tracking switches are greyed out and record nothing.
Both tracking switches are per campaign. Existing campaigns keep the values they were saved with.
#Where the numbers appear
- Overview tab > What your emails did: Sent, Opened, Clicked, Replied, Bounced and Failed, each as a share of sent emails. Opened and Clicked stay at zero if tracking is off.
- Audience tab: the Sent column shows an open count per lead next to how many steps have been sent.
- The lead conversation view: each email carries its own delivery marks (opened, clicked, bounced or an error).
Bounced means the recipient's server rejected the email, often a bad or full inbox. Failed means the email never left, usually a sending problem. There is no separate "delivered" figure.
#What the numbers do not tell you
- An open can be recorded when nobody looked at the email, and a missed open is common when images are blocked.
- Some companies run security software that opens every link in incoming mail. That can record clicks that no human made.
- Replies are the number to trust. That is why an A/B test is decided on replies first and uses opens only as a fallback.
#Tracking that leads to a branch or an A/B test
A Condition step that branches on "opened" or "clicked" only fires if the open or click was recorded, so it needs the matching switch on. See How do I write an email sequence?.
#Custom tracking domain
Open and click tracking only works on a mailbox that has a custom tracking domain: your own domain (for example track.yourdomain.com) that carries the tracked links. It looks more trustworthy and keeps your link reputation separate from other senders. A mailbox without one sends with no tracking at all (no pixel, no wrapped links), and with no unsubscribe link either (see below).
You set it per mailbox: Accounts > the mailbox > Settings > Custom tracking domain. You add one CNAME record at your domain host. Warmerly verifies the record, then checks that HTTPS works for your domain with a valid certificate. Warmerly does not issue that certificate, so your domain must sit behind a service that does (for example Cloudflare with the proxy on). The full walkthrough is in How do I use a custom tracking domain?.
Two behaviours to know:
- A domain that is not yet verified, or has no working HTTPS, is not used. The mailbox sends with no tracking and no unsubscribe link until both checks pass, so a half-finished setup never produces broken or certificate-error links.
- If a mailbox has no working tracking domain, the launch check and the email preview say so. It is a warning, not a block: you can launch. Those emails end with a line asking people to reply "unsubscribe" instead of carrying an unsubscribe link (see Unsubscribe links).
The unsubscribe link in your emails is never rewritten as a tracked link. It lives on your custom tracking domain when you have a working one, and is left out when you do not. See Unsubscribe links.
#Common problems
Opens stay at zero. Open tracking is off (the default), plain text mode is on, or the recipients' apps block images. Turn on Track opens and turn off plain text if you need open numbers, knowing the tradeoff.
Clicks are recorded but nobody replied. Link scanners can click for the recipient. Judge by replies.
Warmi says tracking will record nothing. That message on the Settings tab means plain text is on together with a tracking switch. Turn one of them off.