Pick the email tracking option that gives you the data you need and follow your organization's security protocols. Learn the benefits of Overall, Individual, or Individual Anonymous tracking and when to pick each one.
ContactMonkey makes it easy to adhere to security standards and still track opens, clicks, survey responses, locations, and more! Analyze individual, anonymous, or overall campaign results to identify your most engaged employees, departments, or offices.
This article is specific to our Internal Communications tool. Looking to learn more about the Sales Tool? Check out Getting Started With The Sales Tool.
Getting Started
When you are getting ready to send your email, you’ll see that you can select your tracking method. ContactMonkey has three options for email tracking:
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- Individual
- Anonymous
- Overall
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How it looks for Gmail users:
Each one is useful in unique scenarios.
| Tracking Type |
What is it? |
Useful when: |
Tracks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual | Provides the most in-depth reporting options and plenty of detail about who and when. |
You want as much email performance detail as possible and don’t need to worry about GDPR or the security implications of collecting personal information. |
Unique opens Total opens Multiple opens Unopened |
| Anonymous | Provides the granularity of individual tracking while anonymizing personal identifiable information. |
You want in-depth reporting on your email performance but must comply with GDPR or strict data privacy regulations. |
Unique opens Total opens Multiple opens |
| Overall | Provides high-level detail on email performance while sending to large lists at lightning speed. | You need to get your emails out ASAP, and aren’t too concerned about extremely detailed reporting. |
Unique device opens Total opens Multiple opens |
Individual Tracking
Individual tracking expands your ‘Send To’ distribution lists and delivers an email to each recipient in the list. This provides you with in-depth reporting on open rates and email engagement. You get visibility on exactly who has engaged with the email, and the ability to resend to those who have not opened your email.
With Individual tracking, you get:
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- Unique opens
- Total opens
- Multiple opens
- Unopened
Things to know:
- It takes 3 - 5 seconds to send out per individual email address. If you are sending to large lists, consider using Email at Scale to bypass these sending throttles and send 16x faster.
- Microsoft has a limitation that results in the largest list size being roughly 10,000 recipients for individual sending (recipient counting also follows the same rule). This can be bypassed by Email At Scale.
Anonymous Tracking
Anonymous tracking provides the in-depth reporting of individual tracking while anonymizing recipient email addresses. This allows you to comply with any GDPR or privacy regulations while still getting email performance data.
How it works: ContactMonkey temporarily stores the email addresses as you send your communications. This ensures successful email delivery and allows for the use of merge fields.
Email addresses are anonymized in our database once your communications are successfully sent. We do not store any Personal Identifiable Information (PII).
With Anonymous tracking, you get:
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Unique opens
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Total opens
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Multiple opens
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Things to know:
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- Anonymous tracking is not supported for the COM Add-In or Chrome Extension
- When using Anonymous tracking and segmented stats, segments with fewer than 10 recipients will not return data
- This is because if there are only 3 employees in X location, you can easily determine who did what, thus not making it truly anonymous
Overall Tracking
When a communication is sent on an overall basis, ContactMonkey records the unique devices that have opened the email, but not PII or other sensitive information. Learn more about how trackers work.
With Overall tracking, you get:
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- Unique device opens
- Total opens
- Multiple opens
Overall tracking is the fastest option and is great if you need your email to go out quickly and don’t currently use Email At Scale.
Things to know:
- It takes 3 - 5 seconds to send out per individual email address. If you are sending to large lists, consider using Email at Scale to bypass these sending throttles and send 16x faster.
- Microsoft has a limitation that results in the largest list size being roughly 20,000 recipients for individual sending (recipient counting also follows the same rule). This can be bypassed by Email At Scale.
Opens And Clicks
Enabled by default, opens and clicks are tracked on a total count. For example, one recipient can open an email five times, and that is tracked as five opens. This does not change based on if you select Individual, Anonymous, or Overall tracking.
Tracking Opens
ContactMonkey tracks email opens by automatically injecting an invisible 1x1 image (tracker) into the body of your email as it is sent out. When your recipient opens the email (and displays images), the tracking image is triggered, registering an open for that recipient.
Tracking Clicks
Any link you insert into a ContactMonkey email will be tracked and reported on. This goes for buttons, hyperlinks, social media accounts and attachments. The link is tracked using a URL redirect, meaning it will hit a ContactMonkey domain first and then be directed to the link you provided.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are unique device opens more than the number of recipients?
There are a couple of reasons your device opens may not match recipient count when using Overall tracking:
1. A recipient can open the email on multiple devices (triggering multiple unique opens).
2. A recipient can forward the email (along with the trackers) to another recipient or group (triggering multiple unique opens).