Tracking pixel HTML for open rate on non-Marketo emails

[Nina_Valtcheva5]

We have a holiday card email that will be sent by individuals (not Marketo) and want to see if there is a way to use Marketo/munchkin to track the open rate of emails that users send by forwarding the holiday card email. Is there a email campaign specific tracking pixel and how would I even set up the tracking in Marketo? I'm not a developer at all and only know very basic HTML so any help is greatly appreciated!

[Josh_Hill13]

If it's not sent from Marketo or Sales Insight, you can't track it.

It may be possible to setup some sort of third party wrapper, but I doubt that's worth the effort.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's actually more improbable -- Nina Valtcheva​ is trying to track the opens on forwarded ​non-Marketo emails!

[Jose_Tarzian14]

You could try using Google Analytics. See details here: Email Tracking - Measurement Protocol  |  Analytics Measurement Protocol  |  Google Developers

It won't give you opens at an individual lead level, but at least you could have an aggregated number of opens.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Actually, if all you want is the aggregate number of image-enabled opens of an email sent outside of Marketo, you can track that quite easily using Marketo alone.

Tracking 3rd-party clicks (via their resulting Visits Web Page events, not as literal Clicks Email events) requires more preparation but is also possible.

'bout the only thing that's really out of reach to most people is tracking 3rd-party opens down to the lead level. Of course opens don't really represent the number of people who looked at the non-image-enabled or text-only versions of your emails (I know you know that, Jose, but not everyone gets that yet).

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Blogged here:  Dark Marketo Alleys: Track non-Marketo opens using a "pixel LP"