With this tool, you can tell which of your contacts have opened your emails or clicked the content - these are the engaged contacts that are considered the most valuable, so it's really worth it to keep track of these statistics.
Default tracking settings
By default, your open and click tracking options are enabled on your account's Tracking and Pruning screen:
If for any reason you decide NOT to track opens or clicks, you can uncheck the above boxes and no activity will be tracked from now on for any of your emails. (We still recommend keeping the tracking option on).
Overriding tracking settings
The options to track opens and clicks can be also managed from your Campaign Creator screen:
These settings will affect only this specific campaign regardless of your account's global settings.
If you are sending via API using Add Campaign or Email Send requests, you can manage these overrides by using 'trackOpens=true/false' and 'trackClicks=true/false' parameters. If you are sending via SMTP, you can manage these overrides by providing 'trackopens=true/false' and 'trackclicks=true/false' SMTP headers.
Contact's Consent Tracking
All Contacts have a 'ConsentTracking' field - this is a confirmation whether or not the Contact agrees to tracking their email open and click activity. There are three values for this field: Allow (consent to tracking), Deny (did not consent to tracking) or Unknown (consent is not specifically known, therefore still allowed - default setting for existing and new contacts). If the contact has denied tracking, the global and specific tracking settings will be overridden and no tracking for this particular contact will be available.
The 'ConsentTracking' field can be set when adding a contact via Quick Add or uploading a CSV file on both our dashboard and API. Note when uploading a CSV file, setting the 'ConsentTracking' field will be applied to every contact in the CSV file. If you want to set them specifically for each contact, you will need to add a 'ConsentTracking' column to your CSV file and populate it with either Unknown, Allow or Deny or 0, 1 or 2 respectively. There is also the ability to change this value using the dashboard or calling the /contact/changeconsenttracking API endpoint.
If you want to ask for consent to email tracking by email or campaign, you can use the merge tags {consenttrackingallow} and {consenttrackingdeny}. Put a disclaimer in the email stating "I consent to my email activity being tracked such as opens and clicks" and put two links or buttons below with links to these merge tags respectively. It is best to turn off tracking when sending this campaign since you likely do not currently have consent.
If you are creating a WebForm, you can create an additional 'ConsentTracking' field which will set the Contact's tracking consent to 'Allow' or 'Deny'. If you do not create this field, it will be set to 'Unknown'.
If you want to ask for consent to email tracking on your Unsubscribe/Email Preferences form using the {unsubscribe} merge tag, you can turn this on by clicking Consent Tracking on the Unsubscribe settings screen in your account. Note that you must enable either Manage Subscriptions or Transactional Unsubscribe in order to receive consent using this method.
Tracking FAQ
I have a new account and can't change the tracking options
Changing the tracking options will be allowed when your new account develops a good sender reputation with Elastic Email.
My tracking options are enabled but my emails are not tracked in my statistics
Elastic Email tracks your emails by displaying a tracking pixel. It is an image that is the size of a single pixel, hidden from the actual email contents. Tracking happens only if the pixel is displayed correctly. In most cases, the tracking pixel is not displayed when:
You are sending plain text emails. You should send HTML-based emails if you expect to utilize tracking
Some email clients have an option not to display images. Make sure that your recipients allow displaying images if you want to track the emails that they open.
Your email may be in spam. Some email software blocks images of emails that are in spam, even when they do not block them globally. Move your email to the main inbox and open it afterwards
Click tracking is enabled on my account but I need detailed information on who clicked which of my links
In this case you will have to enable the sub-option of click tracking: "Track clicks by link". Click tracking gives you general information on how many recipients clicked anything in your emails. "Track clicks by link" will provide recipient names and particular link names for you to review.