Tracking your emails will let you know how your recipients are interacting with the messages after they are sent. Staffbase Email lets you know when emails are opened, and when links within them are clicked.

In This Article

• How to Track Emails
• How Opens Are Counted
• What Recipients See
• Link Tracking (Clicks)

How to Track Emails

To get started with tracking:

1. Depending on how your organization uses Staffbase Email, ensure you have set up either web app sending or an add-in/extension for your regular email application.
2. Emails sent via the web app will be tracked automatically.
   If you use an email add-in or extension, make sure tracking is turned on in your email composition window before sending.
   

   In Gmail, make sure the Track box is selected before clicking Send.

   

   In Outlook, make sure that the Track Email button is highlighted before clicking Send.

   

3. Sign in to your Staffbase Email account in your browser to view the stats!

How Opens Are Counted

Staffbase Email uses similar technology as mass-email marketing companies to track email opens. This is achieved by inserting a small and transparent image (or tracking pixel) into the message being tracked. When the email is viewed by your recipient (and the image is downloaded) an Open is recorded.

Some important considerations about opens:

• If the person opening the message has images disabled you will not get an open notification.
  This may be set to default in some email programs due to abuse by spammers.
  
• Sending an email to yourself and opening it in the same browser will not trigger an Open.
  When you track an email, a cookie is set so that you don't receive Opens from yourself (when going through sent items for example). 
  If you are testing your open and click notifications, it's best to open test emails on a different device than the one you send and track from.
• If the recipient uses plain text email you will not get an Open notification.
  While the vast majority of people do not use plain text email (and will automatically download your tracking pixel) it's important to remember this may not always be the case.
• We try to give the recipient a cookie when they open a tracked email - this cookie is extremely important.
  This cookie will ensure that future repeated opens by that user on that device are counted as Repeat Opens and not extra Unique Opens. The cookie also prevents one recipient from triggering multiple Opens in a short span of time.

What Recipients See

Your tracked emails won't look any different for your recipients. No signatures or other visual changes are added to your email that would notify the recipient that you are tracking the message.

The only difference will be that your links will change to redirect links, though this is not obvious to the recipient.

Below is an example of what the alt text for links will appear as in a tracked email:

Link Tracking (Clicks)

When tracking emails from Outlook with Staffbase Email, all links inside your emails will be automatically tracked, and (depending on your notification settings) you will be notified when your links are clicked by recipients.