Count the real opens.
Set the bots aside.
Security scanners and provider pre-fetching inflate open counts. We mark them as bot opens and show them next to the real ones.
What's open & click tracking?
See who opened each email and who clicked a link inside, so you know how a campaign is doing, lead by lead.
What you gain
See who's interested
Every lead's activity shows who opened your email and who clicked a link.
Learn what works
Open rates show how well subject lines land. Clicks show whether the email and its links do.
Follow up at the right time
Reach out to the leads who clicked while their interest is fresh.
What to watch for
Opens aren't exact
Scanners and pre-fetching add opens nobody made, and blocked images hide some real ones. Deliveryman sets bot opens aside.
No opens in plain text
Open tracking needs an image, so it only works on HTML and Rich Text emails. Clicks still track.
It can affect deliverability
Tracking images and rewritten links are things spam filters look at, so some senders turn tracking off.
Bots open emails too.
They don't count here.
Every open is checked. Bot opens get their own total, so your open rate reflects people, not scanners.
Q4 SaaS Founders
OpensTotal Opens
1,876
Unique Opens
1,204
Open Rate
41.3%
Bot Opens
2,392
Lead activity · olivia@northwindlabs.com
2 real opens- Email 1 sent9:14 am
- Bot ActivityNot counted9:14 am
- Opened Email 110:02 am
- Clicked a link in Email 110:03 am
- Opened Email 12:41 pm
Where bot opens come from
Opens that happen with no person reading.
Security scanners
Company mail filters check incoming emails and load the tracking image before anyone reads.
Provider pre-fetching
Some providers load images in advance, so the tracking image fires with nobody reading.
Detection is managed by Deliveryman for each email provider. There's nothing to set up.
Most tools count bots as opens.
Your open rate pays for it.
Every time a scanner loads the tracking image, most cold email tools log a real open. The dashboard looks great. Your pipeline doesn't.
Other tools
4,268
opens, bots counted as people
56% of these opens were never made by a person.
Deliveryman
1,876
real opens, made by people
2,392 bot opens set aside and shown on their own.
You chase the wrong leads
A bot open looks like interest, so you follow up with people who never read it.
You pick the wrong winners
A/Z tests pick winners by opens. When bots vote, the winner is a guess.
You miss deliverability problems
Scanners open emails even in spam, so a good open rate can hide a problem.
Two signals,
tracked for you.
Opens
An invisible tracking image in each email records the open when it loads. Plain-text emails have no image, so they can't track opens.
Clicks
Each link becomes a unique tracking link. The click is recorded and the reader lands on your page instantly. A click needs a real action, so it's the stronger signal.
Noticeably hurts deliverability. Spam filters flag rewritten links, so more of your emails can land in spam.
Prefer not to track? Tracking can be turned off.
Tracked on your domain.
Not a shared one.
Deliveryman hosts the open tracking image on your own sending domain. Tracking adds to your domain's credibility instead of tying it to strangers.
Shared tracking domain
Common in other toolsA different domain from the sender
One domain carries tracking for thousands of senders. If some of them spam, its reputation drops, and it shows up in your emails too.
Your sending domain
DeliverymanSame domain as the sender
The image loads from the domain you send from. Nobody else's sending can affect it, and it stays consistent with your From address.
Matches your From address
Filters see one domain in the sender and in the tracking image, with no unknown third party in between.
No borrowed reputation
Another sender's spam can't put your tracking domain on a blacklist, because nobody else uses it.
Nothing to set up
Deliveryman sets up tracking on your sending domains along with the rest of your DNS.
Why filtered tracking beats raw open counts
When scanners and pre-fetching count as opens, a campaign can look better than it is. In Deliveryman, bot opens are labelled and counted on their own.
DeliverymanRelated features
All features →
Make decisions on real numbers.
Open and click tracking with bot filtering comes with every Deliveryman plan, on every campaign you send.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does open tracking work?
Each email includes a small, invisible tracking image. When the email is opened and the image loads, the open is recorded. Open tracking works on HTML and Rich Text emails, not plain text.
How does click tracking work?
Links in your email are replaced with unique tracking links. When someone clicks, the click is recorded and they're redirected to your page instantly. Click tracking is more reliable than open tracking, because it needs a real action.
What are bot opens?
Opens that weren't made by a person. Security scanners and email providers that pre-fetch content can load the tracking image automatically, which looks like an open in most tools.
What happens to bot opens in Deliveryman?
They're marked as Bot Activity in the lead's activity, they don't count as real opens, and they're shown as a separate Bot Opens total in the campaign's Opens section.
Do I need to set up bot filtering?
No. Detection rules are managed by Deliveryman for each email provider, so filtering works on every campaign with nothing to configure.
Is open tracking safe for deliverability?
In Deliveryman, the open tracking image is hosted on your own sending domain, so it matches the domain in your From address. Many tools load it from a shared tracking domain used by lots of senders, whose reputation can suffer when some of them spam.
Can I turn tracking off?
Yes, tracking can be turned off. Plain-text emails can't track opens at all, since there's no image to load.