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.
