Let's throw some cold water on that hot take, shall we? There's a myth floating around by way of a couple of different hot takes posted to Linkedin. The myth: That, as of last weekend, Gmail has broken all open tracking.
Check your stats. Do you still have successful open tracking? I bet that most of you do. And I know that I do.
On Monday morning I launched my email newsletter to 1,130 people. On the first day, I had 487 tracked, unique opens. By now, a total of 553 tracked, unique opens. 257 of those were clearly Gmail subscribers. My open tracking is working just fine. No, Gmail is not blocking pixel tracking, and it is not throwing up a warning for every email message that contain pixel tracking.
These stats are comparable to last week, and slightly better than the week prior to that.
Gmail Image Loading: What You Need to Know
If you're sending mail with permission, and you have a solid sending reputation, you're good. Nothing to see here. Of course, the standard limitations around open tracking still apply; MPP, proxies, pre-fetch, etc. But did something change last weekend, in some broad way, where Gmail no longer "allows" anyone to try to track opens....NO.
Help! I'm seeing the warning!
If your email recipients are seeing this warning ("Images in this message are hidden. This message might be suspicious or spam.") at the top of email messages you send them, here's what I think is happening:
- You have a poor sender reputation, or
- You have no sender reputation.
Are you a brand new sender, or have you just moved to a new platform, IP address, or domain? Planning to send email marketing messages or newsletters from this new infrastructure? Don't fret. Continue with warmup. Build up your sender reputation. Send wanted, engaging mail to people who have asked for it, and I have a strong suspicion, based on talking to others in the industry, that the warning will go away after a certain point.
If your emails aren't wanted -- you don't have permission, and/or if engagement will continue to be low, then I would expect problems to continue. I think this warning is letting you know that you have a low (or no) reputation, but not quite bad enough to route your mail into the spam folder instead. If things don't improve, either that banner's not going away, or you're going to end up in the spam folder.
But Remember
Gmail did not suddenly drop an anvil on open tracking/pixel tracking. I myself am signed up for many marketing emails and email newsletters, as watching what folks do with email is a big part of my life. I have yet to see this warning on any message I have received.
Other folks are suggesting that those engaged in cold lead email spam may be more likely to see this warning applied to their email sends. I get less of that mail than some, so maybe that's why I have yet to run into this warning.
What about when an open is recorded via Google Image Proxy, and you don't even have the message in your inbox yet? And even if in the inbox, you have not personally opened the message.
ReplyDeleteI do think there's a bit more to it than this but I'm glad you've posted this as it ties into something I've been noticing. (Just to provide some context, we send newsletters to about 460k subs each week across several publications, and have been doing so for about 15 years.)
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is no broad sweeping binary rule change at Google, based on what I've seen, but in the past two weeks we have run into the same message on certain test accounts for certain specific issues. Google Postmaster is maxed out at 100% reputation for IPs, domains, 0% on spam in the last 90 days, and the list isn't dirty (though we're going to do a new round of cleaning to see what the effects are in any case). These are publications that are on the same email address, IPs, and From name for many years, and fully double opt in, meet all the Google bulk sender guidelines, etc.
So my theory is Google *has* tweaked a setting, but not in a binary way. It's a small tweak of the knob that is picking up marginal cases. And they have plenty of precedent for doing that sort of thing, especially if anyone remembers the beginning of the multiple inbox era.. all we can do is notice the patterns, try things out, and try to adapt. But, at least, thanks for mentioning it at all and giving me one more data point that I'm not totally alone this time around ;-)
You're a bit old to be using phrases like "hot take", mate.
ReplyDeleteTHAT FEEDBACK IS TOTALLY ON FLEEK, YO
ReplyDeleteJust tested, with constant contact tracking pixel, gmail spam message and images are hidden, without contant contact tracking pixel, no gmail spam message and images are not hidden. in my case, it sure quacks like a duck, turning off the tracking pixel code, fixes the spam message and hidden images.
ReplyDeleteA few hours ago I received a usual email newsletter from a local bookstore, sent via Constant Contact. I see the tracking pixel in the source. I got no warning, no gmail spam messages, and images were not hidden. That duck is definitely not quacking for everyone, and I have a strong suspicion that sender reputation plays a part.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely a thing, but Al is correct that there's more to it than just the tracking pixels. I work as the postmaster for a mid sized esp and we've noticed a significant drop in tracked global opens amongst all clients as a whole starting at about the middle of October. It now lines up more with other indicators of engagement such as click tracking and website visits.
ReplyDeleteOther factors include all the normal spam triggers like the size of the body. I've been able to determine that the banner appears on mostly empty test emails but increasing the word count and changing nothing else made the banner go away even from domains with only partial authentications (just spf) and domains with no bulk email reputation.