Free email tracking in Gmail

There's nothing worse than spending your valuable time writing an email just to hit send and… crickets. 

That's why it's imperative to find an email tracking tool that removes the guesswork.

The best free email trackers allow you to measure your progress in the sales process and manage your leads right from your Gmail account.

Let's dive into the benefits of using an email tracker for Gmail. 

Full disclosure: since Streak offers free email tracking in Gmail, we’ll explain how some email tracking features work in Streak and how you can use them.

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Why use email tracking software?

If you're a marketing or sales professional or you're just looking for a system of accountability to stay organized, unlimited email tracking is for you.

Here are just a few things a free email tracker allows you to do:

• see if recipients opened your email
• check how many times they opened your email
• get real-time notifications when each view happens
• track emails viewed from where recipients are located (if location data is available) 

Tracking your views with email tracking allows you to see when sales leads or customers have read your emails. Many email tracking tools help you understand who opens your messages more than once so you can gauge interest and follow up with high priority leads.

Email tracking in Gmail is a free Streak feature - just download the free Chrome extension and start tracking your emails today.

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What are the best free email tracking features?

Email tracking tools are a staple for email outreach today. Let's examine what Gmail tracking offers users in today's sales and marketing landscape.

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1. Track views for your sent emails

The most basic functionality of email tracking is seeing when somebody opened your email. 

Depending which email tracking tool you use, email tracking data may include information beyond whether an email was read or not. For example, Streak offers unlimited free email tracking in Gmail that allows you to see:

• Exactly when your message was opened
• Type of device it was opened on (desktop vs. mobile, for example)
• Recipient’s location when they opened the email, if this information is available

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2. Control which emails are tracked in Gmail

Email tracking tools should give you control over which of your sent emails are tracked, and make it easy to turn tracking on or off.

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While email tracking is turned on by default in Streak, you have full control over which emails you want to track. With the free Streak email tracking extension installed, you’ll find an icon at the bottom of each email draft that allows you to quickly turn email tracking on or off for each email draft.

An orange eye icon means Streak is tracking views.

Click the icon to turn off email tracking. A gray eye icon means the email tracking is turned off for the email.

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3. Real-time email tracking notifications

Email tracking software allows for real-time notifications, which let you know the moment a recipient opens your email. This allows you to monitor user engagement or reach out with a call or follow-up email when your lead's message is top of mind. 

Streak offers two types of notifications for email tracking. 

Email tracking browser notifications

Receive browser notifications each time your tracked emails are opened by the recipient.

Email tracking browser notifications help you track email views in real-time. Since the notifications pop up in your browser, you’ll be able to see when somebody opens your email even if you’re working in another tab and not looking at your Gmail inbox. 

Email tracking email notifications

Email notifications are a useful email tracking feature because they notify you in your inbox when recipients open your emails. These can be helpful because unlike browser notifications, they don’t disappear after a few seconds.

This means, for example, that you can find email tracking notifications in the morning to see who viewed your emails while you were away from your computer overnight. 

Email notifications also typically allow you to jump directly to the tracked email thread with a hyperlink.

Streak displays browser notifications and sends email notifications based on your preferences. You can edit your settings in the Streak Settings tab of your Gmail settings.

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4. Email view tracking history

Some email tracking tools allow you to view a history of an entire email thread, in addition to individual sent email drafts. You can find more specific details about how recipients engaged with your messages inside the email thread.

In Streak, you can view email tracking data for multiple emails in a thread in the email tracking sidebar. This gives you a look at how contacts and leads engage with your email thread as the conversation progresses.

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5. Email tracking inbox labels

Email tracking inbox labels show when the last email in a thread has been viewed.

Streak shows a green eye icon with a relative date, like “10h” or “2d,” so you can scan your inbox and see which messages have been recently viewed. 

Streak also creates folders within your Sent mail to show you all of your tracked emails, messages that have been opened recently, and messages that are waiting for a reply from you.

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Smarter follow-up on email tracking

Now that you're sending tracked emails, you can add them to a pipeline to send a targeted follow-up. Create filters to quickly find contacts who have read your emails or opened an email multiple times or see who has read your emails in the last week.

Adding your emails to a pipeline takes 30 seconds and instantly gives you useful data about your leads and email interactions.

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How to chose the best email tracking tool?

Now that you know what features to expect from a reliable email tracking tool, you may be wondering what your options are.

For that, you'll want to compare the best options for tracked emails.

Some things to consider:

• Features: Review available tracking features.
• Accuracy: Ensure reliable tracking metrics.
• Privacy: Check compliance with regulations and user privacy options.
• User Interface: Assess ease of use.
• Integration: Confirm compatibility with existing platforms, like Gmail, Slack, etc.
• Reporting: Look for robust analytics and reporting.
• Customer Support: Evaluate the level of support provided.
• Cost: Consider pricing and scalability.
• Security: Ensure data protection measures.
• Reputation: Check user reviews and testimonials.

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Get started with Streak

If you're ready for real-time notifications and a streamlined process, start monitoring your email engagement with Streak.

It only takes 30 seconds to start tracking emails in Gmail.