Opened e-mails not registered

[Anonymous]

We sent out a campaign internally to track opens and it seems that the e-mail was open during the test but it did not register as an open in Marketo Insight in SFDC or the Activity Log section in Marketo.  The tester mentioned that he did not click on download images.  I am concerned that we are not capturing acurate info.  Is it possible that just by him opening it it would register as a download and show this as an open or does the open rate only go by the dowlonading of the pics.   How does this exactly work.  

[Anonymous]

The open not showing up right away could be due to various factors, simplest of which could just be lagtime of the action actually showing up in reporting.

If this isn't the case I'd suggest going through this checklist:
https://community.marketo.com/MarketoResource?id=kA650000000GxXsCAK

Make sure you haven't deleted the tracking pixel from your email template, and that your email tracking links are set up properly - Marketo support should be able to help you troubleshoot this.  Hope this helps!

[Josh_Hill13]

Opens are not a reliable method of tracking. As your tester noted, if you don't download the images, Marketo cannot tell anything until they click.

Clicks are a much better way to understand engagement. Opens are only directional. I'm pretty sure there is no way to remove the Marketo pixel as it is added during the campaign batch.

[Anonymous]

Good call on the tracking pixel Josh - I looked into this out of curiosity and can confirm that it should not be possible to remove - they are even included in the text-only version.

[SanfordWhiteman]

@Jaclyn in addition, note that Clicks are associated with an implied Open even if the user never downloaded the tracking image. This can give a false impression of the accuracy of Open tracking on its own, which as Josh said is not reliable.