Open tracking allows you to monitor when recipients open your emails by embedding an invisible tracking pixel. This feature provides valuable insights into email engagement, though it comes with inherent accuracy limitations that are important to understand.
Accuracy Limitations: Open tracking is inherently inaccurate due to email client behavior, bot activity, and privacy features. Use open tracking data as approximate engagement indicators rather than precise metrics.

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How Open Tracking Works

Open tracking works by embedding a tiny, invisible 1x1 pixel image at the end of your HTML emails. When a recipient opens the email and their email client loads images, it makes a request to AhaSend’s servers to fetch this tracking pixel, which registers as an “open” event.

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Common Accuracy Issues

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Privacy Considerations

Open tracking has significant privacy implications that you should consider:
Privacy Compliance: Ensure your use of open tracking complies with applicable privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) in your jurisdiction. Consider disclosing tracking in your privacy policy.

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Privacy Impact

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Enabling Open Tracking

Open tracking can be controlled at different levels depending on how you send emails:

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Account-Wide Settings

Configure your default open tracking preference in your AhaSend dashboard:
  1. Navigate to Account Settings in your dashboard
  2. Toggle Open Tracking on or off
  3. This setting applies to all emails unless overridden per message

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Per-Message Override

Override account settings for individual emails using different methods:

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SMTP with Special Headers

For SMTP email sending, use the ahasend-track-opens header to control tracking:
SMTP Example
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Newsletter with Open Tracking
ahasend-track-opens: true
Content-Type: text/html

<html>
<body>
<h1>Your Newsletter</h1>
<p>This email will track opens even if account-wide tracking is disabled.</p>
</body>
</html>
Header Details: The ahasend-track-opens header accepts true or false values and overrides your account-wide open tracking setting for individual emails.
For complete SMTP header documentation, see Special Email Headers.

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API v2 Implementation

API v2 (/v2/accounts/{account_id}/messages) provides native support for tracking configuration:
API v2 Example
{
  "from": {
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "name": "Your Company"
  },
  "recipients": [
    {
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "name": "John Doe"
    }
  ],
  "subject": "Newsletter with Open Tracking",
  "html_content": "<h1>Newsletter</h1><p>This email will track opens.</p>",
  "tracking": {
    "open": true
  }
}
API v2 Advantage: API v2 provides dedicated tracking field at the root level, making it easier to manage tracking settings without dealing with custom headers.
For complete API v2 documentation, see Send Emails using the API.

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API v1 Implementation

For API v1 (/v1/email/send), include tracking headers in the content.headers field:
API v1 Example
{
  "from": {
    "name": "Your Company",
    "email": "[email protected]"
  },
  "recipients": [
    {
      "name": "John Doe",
      "email": "[email protected]"
    }
  ],
  "content": {
    "subject": "Newsletter with Tracking",
    "html_body": "<h1>Newsletter</h1><p>Track opens for this email.</p>",
    "headers": {
      "ahasend-track-opens": "true"
    }
  }
}

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Best Practices

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Troubleshooting