How Email Tracking Works

Every time you send an email through Score CRM, it tracks what happens next. Here's how that works and what it means for your reports.

What Gets Tracked

Event	What It Means	How It's Detected
Sent	Email was handed to your email provider	Score CRM records this at send time
Delivered	Provider confirmed it reached the inbox server	Your provider reports back via webhooks
Opened	Recipient opened the email	A tiny invisible image (tracking pixel) loads
Clicked	Recipient clicked a link	Links are routed through Score CRM's tracking server
Bounced	Email couldn't be delivered	Provider reports back via webhooks
Complained	Recipient marked it as spam	Provider reports back via webhooks
Unsubscribed	Recipient clicked the unsubscribe link	Score CRM's unsubscribe link triggers this

Opens and Clicks — How They Actually Work

Open Tracking

When you enable Track Opens on a campaign, Score CRM adds a tiny invisible image (1x1 pixel) to your email. When someone opens the email and their email client loads images, that pixel is fetched from Score CRM's server — and an open is recorded.

What you should know:

• If a recipient's email client blocks images by default, the open won't register until they choose to load images
• Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images for all emails, which can inflate your open counts — those "opens" may not be real engagement
• Plain text emails can't track opens (no images to load)

This means open rates are always an approximation. They're useful for trends and comparisons, but not as an exact count.

Click Tracking

When you enable Track Clicks, Score CRM rewrites every link in your email to pass through its tracking server:

Your link: https://yoursite.com/sale Becomes: https://your-tracking-domain.com/api/track/click/{id}

When someone clicks, Score CRM records the click and instantly redirects them to your original URL. It happens so fast recipients never notice.

Bounces, Complaints, and Delivery

These events come from your email provider via webhooks — Score CRM can't detect them on its own. That's why setting up webhooks is so important.

Without webhooks, you'll see opens and clicks in your reports, but you won't know about bounces or spam complaints — which means bad addresses stay on your list and keep dragging down your reputation.

Where Tracking Data Shows Up

Your tracking data powers features across Score CRM:

Campaign & Journey Reports

Every campaign and journey shows open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and more. See Campaign Reports and Journey Performance.

Segments

Build audiences based on engagement:

• "Contacts who opened any email in the last 30 days" → your engaged audience
• "Contacts who haven't clicked in 90 days" → candidates for re-engagement or removal

Journey Decisions

Use engagement data to branch your automations:

• "Did they open the welcome email?" → Yes: send tips / No: send reminder
• "Wait for a click, then proceed"

Automatic Suppression

Certain events trigger automatic suppression to protect your sender reputation:

• Hard bounce → contact is immediately suppressed
• Spam complaint → contact is immediately suppressed
• Unsubscribe → contact is immediately suppressed
• 5 consecutive soft bounces → contact is automatically suppressed

You don't need to do anything — Score CRM handles this for you. See Suppression for details.

Tracking Controls

You control tracking at the campaign level with two checkboxes:

• Track Opens — on by default
• Track Clicks — on by default

Turn them off if you have a specific reason (e.g., a privacy-sensitive audience), but in most cases leave them on — they're essential for understanding what's working.