Doing email marketing without quantifiable metrics is ineffective. When you know rates and numbers, you can tailor your outreach better. That’s pretty obvious.
However, the latest generation of email tracking software lets you know not only open rates and CTAs on emails you send. They give context to each lead that happens to come across your website and interact with your outreach.
In its essence, email tracking means for senders to get reports about how their emails are doing in recipients’ inboxes: whether they are open, clicked through, or sent to spam. But generally, email tracking software works as an umbrella term for tools that assist in monitoring email performance and boosting email deliverability.
Although there are many stand-alone email tracking tools, sales professionals and marketers can find email tracking functionality in many sales platforms. In this article, we’ll be looking at several software categories filtered down by use:
Tracking sounds a lot like spying. But it’s not. The rationale is totally different. If someone is spying on your email activity, they’re doing it out of malice — trying to find out personal information about your life that they shouldn't have access to. But when you track email-opens, you’re just trying to figure out whether a professional communication needs to be followed up with a phone call or not.
In the current digital age, tracking emails is becoming essential for businesses. If you haven’t started using email tracking services yet, here’s why you should reconsider.
Measuring the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy with metrics and rates can help you get a clearer picture of how your subscribers are responding to your emails. Not only do email tracking tools provide read receipts, but they also allow you to see who opens your emails and who doesn't, which helps you make revisions to the subject lines of your emails or even delete inactive subscribers from your lists, thus improving your email marketing strategy.
To improve the look and content of your emails, choose from the best email tracking tools.
Right Inbox is a Gmail extension that helps you make the most of your emailing efforts by bringing additional features to your Gmail account. Right Inbox has three great features: tracking, reminders, and scheduling. With these features, you can see who reads and clicks your emails and how many times. You can also set reminders for yourself and set up automated follow-up emails or other tasks. And if you want to send an email at a later time, you can schedule it with the click of a button.
With the "sequences" feature, you can create an automated drip sequence of follow-up emails that are triggered based on whether a recipient opens or clicks an earlier message. This helps automate relationship-building processes like onboarding new customers or nurturing leads who aren't quite ready to buy yet.
Pricing: A free version offers you 5 emails to track and 10 emails to send later. The unlimited plan costs $7.95 per user per month if billed monthly and $5.95 per user per month if billed annually.
As a cold email outreach platform, SalesHandy has free email tracking and scheduling functionality for Gmail (for Outlook users, these functions are available in paid plans). Using SalesHandy’s desktop email notification software, you can receive real-time live updates on all email activity, create and save up to five email templates to send the same messages with ease and efficiency, and track the downloads of your emails.
SalesHandy improves users’ email productivity. You will receive real-time notifications when your emails are opened and links are clicked, as well as the ability to save email templates on the go. Besides, SalesHandy doesn't force you to add a branded signature to all your emails—a feature that most other tools require of their free users.
If you opt for a paid version, HubSpot, Salesforce, MailChimp, and Zapier integrations become available to you so you can leverage email data and email insights right in your CRM.
Pricing: Gmail users can get SalesHandy’s free unlimited email tracking. Paid plan starts from $9 per user per month.
If you don’t need sophisticated analytics and multiple functions and just want to track email opens and clicks, use this simple and free Chrome extension. Mailtrack will automatically add a checkmark next to any email you’ve sent, and another checkmark beside it when it’s opened by the recipient. You can also add an additional checkmark next to an email that has been clicked. That’s all there is to it! It’s simple, easy-to-use, and effective. Mailtrack Pro offers daily reporting, reminders, and signature removal.
Pricing: In paid plans, users get email support, full tracking history, mail merge, and link tracking for €1 per user per month, and group emails individually tracked for €2.49 per user per month.
Streak is an extension for Gmail that tracks your emails and lets you know when the recipient opens them. You can get real-time notifications through email or the browser, and you can see in a single view all of your most recent tracked emails.
Streak also gives you the ability to send a follow-up email if the first one has been opened—so you can let everyone know that they missed an important deadline, thank them for their contributions, or ensure that they got a product update.
With Streak, you can make sure your message is received, and keep the conversation going when it's most relevant.
Pricing: Email tracking is free. Other options, such as link tracking, mail merge, shared pipelines, advanced CRM, and so on are available starting with $15 per user per month.
MailTag is a simple Google Chrome extension that helps you understand what happens after you click "send". Use this email tool to know when and where your emails are being opened and which links within those emails are being clicked. You can also track the performance of your open rates, link-click rates, and more.
The tool has an updated scheduling feature so that now you can track the performance of your scheduled emails. This way, you can increase your open rate by choosing the right time for your emails to be delivered. The ping feature will send custom-made automatic follow-up messages based on your preferences. Pings are automation features that will save you time and energy by increasing reply rates and sales via email.
Pricing: $9.99 per user per month if billed annually or $12.99 per user per month if billed monthly. A free trial is available.
AtomPark Software offers web-based bulk marketing services, including mailing, verifying, and tracking the efficiency of your email campaigns. AtomPark’s tools are designed to make a profit from your mailing list, by helping you get rid of restrictions on parsing, verifying, and mailing your leads and customers.
The Email Tracker feature monitors your sent email messages and compiles statistics on the success of your email campaigns. Access data on email opens, click-throughs, pages visited, and much more.
The Subscription Manager feature allows you to manage mailing list subscriptions on your website and to send out personalized messages to your customers. You can process incoming messages automatically, which will save you plenty of time and effort.
The email extractor tool is designed for parsing, verifying, and exporting contact information from the Whois database. Using Atomic Whois Explorer, you can gather details about the domain name registration date and expiration date, registrant's name, phone, fax number, etc.
Atomic Email Hunter is a search engine that finds email addresses with usernames on specific websites. You can specify any number of keywords for search to get just the emails you need for a targeted mailing list. Atomic Email Hunter supports proxy servers, works behind a firewall, and is extremely fast!
Pricing: Try the tool for free.
MailTracker is a free app developed by Hunter.io that lets you know when someone opens your email, clicks through it, and shows the type of device (computer, mobile, or tablet) which is used to open the emails. It’s simple to use and works on desktop and mobile and is available for Apple Mail, Gmail and Outlook users. Also, the tool has the email finder and email verifier features. When installed as a Chrome extension, tracking will enable, and check-marks will inform you of your email progress.
Pricing: Free
As many businesses have learned, quantity is not the same as quality. However, when your list is of low quality — filled with unengaged, uninterested subscribers who haven’t bothered to click any links or unsubscribe from your emails — all of your email metrics suffer. Instead, you need to find real people who are actually interested in hearing from you and engaging with your content.
There are a bunch of metrics you should be measuring to make sure your list is actually full of people who want to hear from you. The tools below will help you understand how engaged your list is, how many unsubscribes you’re getting, and how interested in your content the subscribers are.
With Kickbox, you can be sure that the email addresses on your list are accurate and verified. The #1 trusted email verification solution, Kickbox helps you protect your sender reputation, reduce bounces, and ensure that your message arrives at the inbox every time.
Kickbox’s real-time Verification API connects to your email collection forms and ensures that only valid and live email addresses are collected.
Pricing: Run a free batch analysis today. Then get 500 verifications at $5, 1,000 verifications at $10, and so on.
NeverBounce provides a powerful and reliable email list cleaning service that helps companies improve their sender reputation, increase deliverability and build better customer relationships.
NeverBounce’s bulk email list cleaning is designed to help your business maintain the integrity of its email list, prevent bounces, and protect its sender reputation by removing bad emails as they come in.
NeverBounce’s real-time email verification feature helps you improve your overall sender reputation by identifying and removing invalid emails before you send them. Automated list cleaning makes sure that your business never sends to a dirty email list again by verifying and cleaning lists for the perfect send.
NeverBounce’s seamless API verifies emails as they happen, ensuring that the emails you send are valid and will reach the inbox. NeverBounce allows users to integrate the tool into their existing applications with ease.
Pricing: Try for free and then pay $0.008 per up to 10,000 emails, $0.005 per up to 100,000 emails, and so on.
Bounceless.io is an email verification tool that will help you boost deliverability and ROI. It works by verifying your list to remove dead emails, so you don't send to users who'll never see your campaign anyway!
Bounceless.io's email checker reduces your bounce rate by removing bad email addresses from your contact list. Bounceless.io uses sophisticated algorithms to update their database of disposable and misspelled emails in real-time, so you can count on the tool to scrub even the most recently created accounts. This will help you save money and improve ROI while ensuring that the people you're sending to are actually getting your content.
Pricing: Try for free and then pay $19 per 2,500 email verifications, $39 per 5,000 email verifications, and so on.
In many cases, email marketing and tracking are included as part of a comprehensive sales and marketing software package alongside other features such as email templates, customer management, and customer relationship management. The tools in this section help to provide insight into how you’re doing with your email marketing, so you can make adjustments as necessary.
HubSpot's email tracking features help you get a more complete picture of the impact your emails have on your business. You'll know who’s opening your emails, when they’re opening them, and what kind of return on investment you’re getting from your email marketing efforts.
HubSpot's email tracker is robust, intuitive, and easy to use. They integrate seamlessly into your existing inbox, so you can enjoy the benefits of seeing which emails have been opened and acted upon without having to change the way you normally work. Plus, the HubSpot CRM automatically imports the data from the email tracking tool, so you don't have to worry about double entry or wasted time spent on data entry in general.
In addition, HubSpot's A/B testing feature helps sales reps build better emails that will be more effective in growing their audiences and converting them into customers. Full-funnel tracking gives marketers a clear view of what happens to leads after they click on a link in an email—whether they go on to make purchases or unsubscribe from your list. It even shows you which emails are leading people away from your website (and which ones are driving them toward it).
Pricing: Free plans are available for all Hubs. Paid plans start at only $50 per month for both Marketing and Sales Hubs.
Pardot is a marketing automation tool geared toward B2B companies that offers a wide range of email tracking features to help optimize every aspect of your email marketing efforts. Pardot also offers a full suite of automation features, including email A/B testing, lead identification, list management, plus rendering, and SPAM filter check-ups to help ensure that your emails are reaching their intended destinations and making an impact.
Pardot's main focus is helping you build an engaged audience for your company's products or services. You can create personalized experiences for your target audience by building internal partnerships, optimizing email content, and nurturing relationships with leads from their first touchpoint through the purchase. Pardot also has integrations with Salesforce, Google Analytics, and more.
Pricing: Pardot charges $1,250/m for up to 10,000 contacts.
In addition to marketing tools, Zoho Campaigns offers an email tracking option so you can see how engaged your contacts are and find out who’s opening your emails. You can also track your CTRs and find out which CTA they chose, if any.
Zoho Campaign’s powerful analytics provide detailed insights into what's working and what isn't in your email campaigns. That way, you can optimize your newsletters in real-time and keep refining them over time.
For example, Zoho supports A/B testing, so you can send multiple versions of the same email to subsets of your audience to see which subject line produced the highest open rate and CTR. Then, you can use the most effective combination to boost your next campaign.
Pricing: A free plan is available for 6,000 emails to 2,000 contacts per month. Paid plans cost €3/m or €4.5 for unlimited emails.
Cirrus Insight is the sales software offering an email tool that’s designed to help sales teams work within their Outlook and Gmail inboxes, rather than switching back and forth between the tools. Cirrus Insight offers comprehensive email tracking and analytics, plus less common features like attachment tracking and email templates.
The tool syncs with Salesforce and your calendar, so you can automatically schedule meetings after sending an email.
Pricing: Try for free. The cheapest plan costs $10/user/mo.
This simplified tool for email marketing has an email tracking function that enables you to track how many people are opening your emails, how many of them are clicking through to your website, and how many times they are actually engaging with your business as a result. With AWeber's email tracking tools, you can easily integrate our platform into your existing system at just the click of a button.
Plus, you'll have access to easy-to-use templates that will let you create stellar messages that are sure to get read by your customers—and will help them remember you each time they do!
AWeber also offers easy, automated API integrations that allow you to connect your other business tools, such as your CRM or e-commerce platform, directly to your email account. You can also use our open API to create custom tools that track emails in real-time.
Pricing: Start free and move on to a Pro Plan at $16.15/m.
There are dozens of email tracking tools available that can be used to improve email efforts, but no single tool will necessarily beat the importance of the right email service provider (ESP). If your goal is to improve your email marketing efforts, it’s important to choose an ESP that can deliver the data you need to see the results. The email service providers from the list are not run-of-the-mill variety and have the best email tracking software analytics in the field, so you can always tell what’s working and what isn’t. Here’s a rundown of some of our favorites.
As an email marketing platform, Mailchimp offers advanced analytics that allows you to track your email performance and see how you're doing in comparison to your industry peers. If you're not sure where to start, use our insights to figure out what's working for your campaigns and what could use improvement.
Mailchimp has a new feature that lets you see how your emails stack up against the competition, so you can see what's working and what could be improved. You can monitor the ROI of your email marketing efforts by tracking sales from a click in your campaign all the way to purchase. Plus, we have an advanced analytics dashboard that shows you detailed revenue reports for each campaign.
Pricing: You can use the MailChimp domain based on 2,000 contacts for free. More functions are available in paid plans starting at $11/m based on 500 contacts.
Campaign Monitor is an ESP that is known for making it easy to create visually compelling emails — but their email analytics features are no slouch. Campaign Monitor, a comprehensive analytics solution and marketing platform, offers in-depth analytics including geography, acquisition, and engagement. All analytics are broken down by campaign, making it easy to see what's working and what's not.
This allows you to see where your subscribers are and how engaged they are with your content, so you can make tweaks to improve on future campaigns and increase subscriber retention.
Pricing: You can start for free and then move on to paid plans. The Basic plan costs $9/m and offers 2,500 emails. Unlimited email sent volume is available at $29/m. All plans have reporting and analytics features.
ActiveCampaign is an email service provider (ESP) that gets you more from your email marketing by offering advanced analytics, split testing, and detailed customer profiles. ActiveCampaign's split testing functionality helps marketers improve their subject lines and purchase requests.
The built-in analytics provide deep insights into how your campaigns are performing, and the data is presented in an easy-to-read format. You can also make use of their automated reporting tool to generate custom reports in just a few clicks.
Pricing: ActiveCampaign offers a free trial, and the prices range from $9 per month up to $149 per month.
Yesware is an email service provider (ESP) that can help you improve your outreach results. Yesware provides web-based tracking tools for Gmail and Outlook 365 users. Yesware lets you monitor things like opens, replies, and even pageviews of your presentations.
This service is part of a suite of sales tools offered by Yesware. The suite also includes templates, CRM integrations, calendar sync with Salesforce and HubSpot, and more. Yesware’s tools — which include reporting functions and integrations with outside software — allow sales teams to follow buyer journeys and estimate the effectiveness of their outbound lead generation and of each sales rep’s templates.
Pricing: A free trial offers basic email tracking features. A $15/m plan offers unlimited email tracking and personal templates (per user if billed annually).
It can be a challenging task to choose an effective tool that will start tracking your emails and suit your other needs. But it's important to find one that works in conjunction with your existing tools, and that is priced reasonably.
To start with, decide why you need an email tracking tool. Do you want to track emails to see if they have been read? Do you want to know whether or not they were forwarded? Do you need detailed engagement metrics? Once you've identified what functionality you need, it will be easier to narrow down the options.
Next, estimate how many emails you send regularly. Some software has limits on the number of emails that can be sent per month without payment, so it's important to consider how much volume your team sends and whether or not it will exceed any limits set by the tool.
Then, consider what other sales software tools are already in use in your organization. If there are multiple systems in place, make sure the tools work well together. Even if you're only considering free email tracking tools, there are plenty of options that integrate well with other software — so don't feel like you have no choice but to go for a paid option just because of the features it offers.
Finally, check out the pricing details and features of different tools under consideration.
Belkins is always eager to help you manage your email marketing campaigns and other lead generation activities. Give us a call or leave a message in case you'd like some assistance.
