Tracking Email Open Activity in Marketo

[Muhammed_Suhail]

We noticed some discrepancies between count for Email Opened in Smart list report and Email Performance as Marketo track open activity when GIF pixel tracking getting downloaded. We found with help of smart list report using 'Not Opened' and 'Clicked link in email' filters.

Question:
As many email clients such as Outlook don't download images by default, if someone open their email without downloading or clicking to download all images, does Marketo will be able to capture Open activity?

Is it possible for Marketo to record Open Activity in an email we sent without any images?

I'd like to understand how Marketo capture Open Activity with invisible tracking pixel image?

[uditmathur]

Hi @Muhammed_Suhail ,

You can go through below links to get you quarries clarified

For Email Open activity without image https://nation.marketo.com/t5/knowledgebase/marketo-does-not-see-an-quot-opened-email-quot-activity/...

For How Marketo Track Email activity https://nation.marketo.com/t5/knowledgebase/how-marketo-tracks-email-activity/ta-p/248639

Hope this helps 👍

[Christiane_Rode]

Additionally, for the email performance report, there are certain assumptions that the report makes -- if someone clicks a link in an email, it will show an open on the performance report, because you can't click a link without opening an email. 

Opens are not really something to be used as a means of determining success, however, due to the unreliability of this metric. It's tough to say whether or not an "open" was actually done by a human -- Was it a Spam Checker? Was it Apple Mail or some other email client that preloaded the images and triggered the open? Or did someone have images turned off and didn't interact with your email at all but they still read it? It's all tough to say.