You launched a campaign.
The dashboard says 60% open rate. You feel good.
Then the replies don’t come.
That’s not bad luck. A big chunk of those opens were never people.
instantly and smartlead admit it
Instantly’s own blog on open tracking says open data “is lying because the underlying mechanism that generates it is broken.”
Read that again.
The tool tells you to stop trusting opens. The dashboard keeps showing them anyway. That’s insane.
Smartlead says the same thing. Its own blog says “open rates in cold email are almost always inaccurate.” Its help center says bot opens are flagged using patterns, and that it’s “not 100% foolproof.” Then it tells you to rely on replies instead.
Different tools. Same problem. Any tool that counts pixel loads as opens ends up with the same wrong data.
who is opening your emails?
An open is just a tiny image loading. Anything that loads it counts. Humans. Bots. Doesn’t matter.
- Apple Mail. Since 2021, Apple pre-loads images whether or not anyone reads the email. Bird says more than 55% of global opens came from Apple devices using it, as of early 2024.
- Security scanners. Company email gateways scan every message and fire the pixel. No human involved.
- Image blocking. The other direction. Real opens get hidden. So your number is wrong both ways.
Instantly’s own advice: treat an open rate above 50% as probably Apple or gateway traffic. Smartlead’s: an open within seconds of sending is almost certainly a scanner.
why do tools still show it?
Because counting every pixel load is easy. And a big number makes your campaign look healthy.
Telling a bot from a person takes real work. Most tools skip it.
You end up optimizing subject lines against a number made of scanners.
what we do instead
We filter the bots out. Automatically. Every plan.
We call it Trusted Open Tracking. You see the opens that came from people, not scanners.
- Bot opens removed. No setup, no hacks. It’s on the features page under Advanced Open + Click Tracking.
- Tracking on your own domain. Pixels and links run on your sending domain, not a third party’s. Mailbox providers see you, not a tracking vendor.
- Built into more. High Intent Leads only flags leads based on trusted opens. A flagged lead is a person.
One thing: open tracking needs HTML emails. Plain text can’t track opens.
Stop guessing. Stop celebrating scanners.
