When you’re sending emails for business purposes, you likely have a vested interest in knowing whether an email to a customer or client has been opened. Without any signal, you may never know if the email landed in a spam folder, if your message was simply missed, or if they don’t have a strong need for your product. When you so know if a customer opened an email, you can build a plan to move forward.
Return Receipts are Slightly Intrusive
One, old-school way to track if emails have been read is to use return receipts. There are ways to request an email return receipt on a variety of clients, including Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Zimbra, Gmail, and more.
The only drawback to this approach is it can come off a bit intrusive – if you’re reaching out to a customer to request one type of action from them, whether that means buying a product or signing up for a newsletter, you’re already making one request.
The best way to have a successful email campaign is by keeping a two-way conversation going with the readers. A return receipt can be a great idea, but it isn’t the only concept of its kind.
Delivery Receipts Provide Part of the Story
When we’re wondering whether a person has received and read an email, the reason for it is to determine whether they got the information within.
A delivery receipt doesn’t exactly tell you whether they read what you sent – but it does provide part of the information you need, and it provides it automatically. As the name suggests, it determines whether the email has found the receiver’s server.
This is at least helpful for letting you know the email wasn’t lost somewhere in cyberspace. Not all delivery receipts will ensure you the email didn’t tumble into some spam folder, so choose wisely.
While we may not be able to control whether a person opens an email and views the contents within, we can at least ensure the email got to its intended destination to be viewed when the reader chooses.
Luckily, modern email tech makes tracking email opens easy and unobtrusive.
Using Email Tracking for Business Purposes
For some people, the concept of tracking emails seems a bit intrusive. For businesses, there’s nothing wrong with it – in fact it is a smart way to ensure marketing efforts are proving worthwhile.
Or at the very least, it can indicate to you when those efforts aren’t working as well as they could be.
Mixmax allows you to see if someone has read your email. Using Email Tracking, you can see when the email was opened and how many times.
Several teams can benefit from email tracking:
- Sales Teams: Trying to promote a product, close a deal, and make sure customers don’t miss out on a time-sensitive sale can be tense. Just knowing whether they read your email or not can provide guidance on how interested and engaged they are with your produce. You can build special follow up strategies based off how many emails they have opened.
- Recruiters: Getting talented individuals onboard an organization is a great way to strengthen the team but keeping great prospects engaged through a long on boarding process can be challenging. Using email tracking you can ensure your prospects see updates and in-person invites.
- Customer Success Teams: A helpful message is of no use if it is never read. CS teams tasked with retaining customers need to know whether their attempts to reach out have worked.
There are a lot of benefits in knowing whether your email was read. But it isn’t just so you have that piece of information alone – it’s so you can build upon it to continue the relationship.
Related Post: Leverage Achieves 70% Open Rate and Saves 20 Hours per Quarter with Mixmax
Establishing Rules for Followup
If a customer has responded to an email with an inquiry or a professed course of action, things are easy. You know what to do next. Unfortunately, as we all know, things are rarely that simple.
The next step is often about knowing what message to send next depending on the one you get back – or the one you don’t. To increase productivity you can automate part of the sales effort with Mixmax Rules. You can build rules based on opening activity. For example, you can create a rule to send a follow up email with a customer video if someone opens your email ‘X’ times. Conversely, if someone doesn’t open your email, you can send a similar email to the first describing the product and benefits. Both situations help keep all prospects or customers engaged and aware of the product and require no manual interventions.
Additionally, if you have a client that has opened the email 3 or more times, you can schedule an automatic reminder to reach out to the prospect via phone as this client is far more likely to be interested in your product than a prospect that has not opened any emails.
Related Post: Mixmax + Text Messaging: Embed an SMS contact form in your email
Email Tracking is a Smart Tool for Business
When sales, customers success and recruiting teams want to refine and focus their efforts, tracking opens with automate follow up increases productivity significantly.
Understanding who has and has not opened their email can signal what information they have received and are ready for next. It can also be a tool to understand how interested and engaged they are pre-sale. Tracking tools give businesses insights about what to do next to make sure the following email they send has a higher chance of getting the desired result.
Get Started with Mixmax
Looking to automate your day? Mixmax offers a powerful blend of automation, tracking, and reporting, empowering your sales, customer success and recruiting teams to elevate their performance.
Start your risk-free trial of Mixmax today.
