How do I track emails in Gmail?

Imagine being able to know exactly who opened your email, how many times they read it, what links they clicked on and where they are. Email tracking is vital for businesses as it helps us understand how our customers/clients react to our emails. This blog will cover what email tracking is and the tools that allow you to do this. 

Note: The latest version of the Apple iOS and macOS has a new privacy feature which blocks all mail tracking pixels.

Gmail Tracking vs Email Analytics

There’s an important distinction to be made between tracking emails and email analytics. Email tracking allows you to see things like how many people opened your email, or how many links were clicked on. Email analytics shows you information about your own inbox and interactions, including how many emails you sent, how many replies you received or how long you took to reply. You’ll need different tools for each of these.

Best Email Tracking Software for Gmail

1. Email Meter

Best for: Tracking email volume and response times

For tracking email analytics, Email Meter is a complete platform giving you a wide range of statistics and insights on all aspects of your email. By connecting to your Gmail inbox (or your team’s), it automatically calculates things like number of sent or received emails, your response time, who you email the most, how many CC’s vs direct messages you receive and more.

Email Meter Best Features

• Tracks emails automatically—no complex setup or install needed.
• Gives you insights on all aspects of your email behavior, allowing you to track your marketing, sales or any other efforts easily.
• See the workload for each of your team members, including in shared inboxes.
• Instant installation for your entire domain.
• Fully customizable dashboards are available, or choose from a variety of useful pre-made metrics.

“My overall experience was great. When I had a question, the team was responsive, informative, and timely. The data was useful and allowed us to understand our email and business practices on a team and individual level.” - Natalia S. on Capterra

Email Meter Pricing

• Free forever. 
• Pro: 15$/month yearly payment ($180) or $19/month. Unlocks filtering, 2 years of past data and other advanced features.
• Teams: 15$/user/month yearly ($180) or $19/user/month. An extension of Pro, adds the ability to see your whole team from a central dashboard, and generate full reports for any combination of team members.
• Enterprise: Pricing dependent on needs. Unlocks the most powerful features, generally recommended for teams of 15+ members. Completely custom dashboards and metrics can be created for you upon request.

2. Mailtrack

Best for: Tracking email opens for free, along with the option of an advanced paid plan.

Mailtrack is a free extension for Google Chrome, which allows you to track emails sent in Gmail. It’s easy to use and allows you to see when emails have been opened, as well as how many times they’ve been opened. It uses a pixel-based tracking system.

Mailtrack Best Features

• Notifications when your email has been opened, and the ability to see when they’ve been re-opened.
• Robust free plan.
• A dashboard helps you to track what emails are still waiting to be opened.
• Reminders tell you when an email you’ve sent hasn’t been opened.

“MailTrack is really essential for me to track and monitor the email that are sent out. The report is quite extensive, as it will show how many of the email are opened by the recipient, how long the email are opened and if the email are opened more than one time. We can use this data to altering our marketing campaign effectively.” - Masturah D. on Capterra

Mailtrack Pricing

• Free forever. Unlimited tracking with a Mailtrack signature. Track first open only.
• Pro: $4.99/month yearly payment ($59), $5.90/month quarterly payment ($20)  or $9.99/month if you pay monthly. Allows you to remove the Mailtrack signature, unlocks full metrics of all opens and more.
• Advanced: $9.99/month yearly payment ($120), $13.99/month quarterly payment ($42)  or $19.99/month if you pay monthly. Allows you to track group email opens individually, unlocks integrations and more.

3. Streak

Best for: Sales teams who also want a CRM and mail merge in a single product.

Streak is a simple, clean email tracking tool for Gmail. It lets you see the status of your emails and make sure your customers are getting their messages, without cluttering up your inbox. You can see open rates and click-throughs, plus get notifications when a recipient replies to a message or changes their status. And since it's all in your Gmail inbox, you don't have to switch apps or log in to different accounts to see what's happening with your email campaigns.

Streak Best Features

• Works directly from the Gmail interface, meaning you can turn it on and off with a single click from the compose window.
• Includes Mail Merge and CRM.
• See all your tracked emails in a list sorted chronologically, making it easy to see what needs a reply next.
• You can send mass emails to only those recipients who opened your last email, helping you avoid spamming and increasing your open rate.

“This is the best platform so far out there that I've used in terms of sending emails, managing emails, and tracking the open rate and the acceptance rate of my emails. You can also schedule an email sending time using Streak which is pretty awesome!” - Romy A. on Capterra

Streak Pricing

• Free forever. 500 CRM boxes, 50 Mail Merge uses per day.
• Solo: 15$/month yearly payment ($180) or $19/month, per user. 5000 CRM boxes, 800 Mail Merge uses per day.
• Pro: 49$/user/month yearly ($588) or $59/user/month, per user. Unlimited, advanced CRM, and 1500 Mail Merge uses per day.
• Enterprise: 129$/user/month yearly ($1548) or $159/user/month, per user. Everything in Pro plus custom permissions and data validation.

4. Hunter MailTracker

Best for: Anyone looking for a simple and free solution for tracking email opens.

Hunter is a cloud-based solution that helps businesses find and verify professional email addresses from domains, companies or a specific professional on the web.

Hunter Mailtracker is their free tracking extension, it allows you to track your emails and know when they’re opened (both the first time and each subsequent time), as well as what device (mobile or desktop).

Hunter Mailtracker Best Features

• Completely free—there’s no paid option!
• As it’s a simple extension for Chrome, it’s extremely easy to install and start using.
• Can be activated and deactivated easily when you’re composing an email.
• Knowing if a contact opened an email on mobile or desktop can help you understand if they’re ignoring you or just waiting to reply.

“I just wanted a simple mail tracker to confirm if recipients had opened an email. So far, it's working great and doing exactly what I need it to do. It's also nice having the extra info like how many times it was opened and what time it was opened. Super useful and simple.” - Rich A. on Chrome Web Store

Hunter Mailtracker Pricing

• Free forever.

5. OpenedOrNot

Best for: tracking email opens for free with a simple extension or as part of a paid package.

OpenedOrNot is a free email and link tracking software for Gmail. It allows you to track emails and links, giving you real-time updates. It works as a free extension for Chrome, forming part of the 500apps software package, which aims to give you all apps needed to run your company under one subscription.

OpenedOrNot Best Features

• Real time notifications make sure you know instantly when your email is opened.
• Shows when the email is initially opened, as well as any other subsequent opens, along with the date and time they were opened.
• Read indicator icon is added directly to your inbox, so you can check what’s been opened and what’s pending easily.
• Gives you link tracking, so you can see if individual links in an email are opened, and how many times.
• Reminders make sure you don’t forget about an important email which may need a follow-up.
• Daily reports show you how many emails you sent vs. how many were opened.

“There are only few tools that can help business owners and freelancers to navigate their email with ease like this one, it has a unique features and functions unlike any other tracking apps.  It is very useful especially when you are busy or had a limited time, this tools helps you doing makes things more efficient.” - John F. on Chrome Web Store

OpenedOrNot Pricing

• Free forever. The extension is free to use.
• Paid: 9.99$/month yearly payment ($180) or $14.99/month with monthly payment, per user. Unlocks the full suite of apps included in 500apps.

Each of these tools is worth trying out, depending on your individual needs. The key takeaway here is that you should try as many different solutions as you can to find the one that works best for you. The tools I've recommended above are by no means the only ones available, and there are plenty of others available on the market right now. Try them out and find the one that works best for you!