GMAIL’S EMAIL PROXY FEATURE AND THE IMPACT ON EMAIL OPEN RATES

Have you heard of the feature Email Proxy released by Gmail? Well, if you haven’t then you have missed a big cue as an email marketer. After all, this one feature is about the only thing proving to be beneficial for the email marketers at this time. Yup, you heard the right thing. It is indeed a positive thing for the email marketers.

It indeed boosts the rate of an email actually being opened and read by the user. In the following parts of this article, let us just scope for a bit more detailed orientation about the subject.

There are various points on which this feature improved the email experience of the users. First of all, the new algorithm will permit images in html email messages to be displayed by default. So, no more empty boxes will be visible to the prospect. Furthermore, people won’t need to click on “Show Images” to actually enable the image feed in the email. Another great advantage of the new email service of Gmail is the cache speed. Gmail would Cache the emails even before a recipient opens up the mail. Once opened, the mail will be displayed from the server of Google. That will decrease the loading time of the mail.

Cool service eh? But wait there is a small glitch to this service. The data it provides the senders about email opening is very much inaccurate. Let’s take a look what sets of data Gmail records to understand the process. Whenever a sender releases email, all the ESP (Email Service Providers) like Sendloop record the total number of times the email is opened, the number of time someone unique opens the emails you send, the location of the recipient and the time, the email client that you are using.

Now when Gmail downloads and Caches your email images, the data of where the email was opened from, gets cached as well. It is set to Mountain View, California, USA before it hits the users’ inbox. The tracking image of the email shows the place as the same no matter where the email was opened from. That is a big hindrance in the path of collecting the proper data. Thus it impacts the email senders who use these indicators to measure their development regarding leads and sales. The optimization and the follow up will take some doing no doubt.

Does that mean there are no solutions to this? Well, of course there are. If you have the Sendloop account that is. You can use the email open detection service of the guys at Sendloop. The procedure can give you correct data regarding the location and the unique opens. Gmail can launch small fix to make things alright again in the future. However, that is not a guarantee.

For now, using Sendloop’s service in tandem with Gmail’s Image Proxy Service is the best bet for email senders and marketers. The process is safe and has a proven success rate in providing users with the correct metric to measure their progress.

http://sendloop.com