Open and click statistics are crucial for analyzing your email campaigns. However, it’s important to understand that these two metrics are collected using different technologies. This directly impacts their accuracy, especially concerning recipients’ geographical locations.
Let’s break down how it all works.
Clicks: A Direct Action, Accurate Data
Every link in your email is transformed by our system into a special tracking link. This mechanism ensures high statistical accuracy.
How it works:
- The user clicks on a link in the email.
- Their browser briefly accesses our server, which registers this action.
- We receive technical information directly from the user’s device: their IP address (allowing us to determine the country and city), device type, and browser.
- Immediately after, the user is automatically redirected to the final website.
Since a click is a direct action initiated by the user, we get data directly from their device. This makes click and geolocation statistics highly reliable (unless the user hides their IP address with a VPN).
Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which can mask the user's real IP address
Opens: Tracking Technology and Its Nuances
To record an email open, we use an invisible image (a pixel) embedded in every email.
How it works: When the recipient’s email client (e.g., Gmail or Apple Mail) loads images in the email, it requests this pixel from our server. We register this request as an open.
Why the data might be inaccurate
Modern email services, especially Apple (with Mail Privacy Protection) and Google’s Gmail, actively protect user privacy. They do this by employing proxying technology:
- The email arrives at the email service’s server (e.g., Apple’s server).
- The server independently loads all images from the email onto its side, including our tracking pixel. This often occurs even before the actual user engagement with the email.
- At this moment, our system registers the request and records an “open.”
This leads to a significant difference in geolocation data:
- When the image is loaded by the email client on the user’s device, we get their real IP address and see accurate geolocation.
- When the image is loaded by the email service’s proxy server, we get the IP address of that server (e.g., located in the USA or Ireland), not your subscriber’s IP address.
Therefore, in open statistics, the geography might sometimes differ from the actual location, showing activity from countries where major email providers’ data centers are located. This isn’t an error but a consequence of modern privacy standards in the email industry.
Quick Comparison
| Parameter | Clicks | Opens |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking Method | Redirection via a link | Invisible pixel loading |
| Data Accuracy | High. Direct user action is recorded. | Estimated. Action may be initiated by a proxy server. |
| Geolocation Accuracy | High. IP address is determined from the user’s device. | May vary. Depends on who loaded the image: the user’s client or the email service’s proxy server. |
Understanding these technical processes will help you correctly interpret the statistics of your email campaigns.