Email tracking is fundamental to understanding whether your campaigns are working. Without it, you're sending messages into the void and hoping for the best. But tracking has become more complicated in recent years. Privacy features, mail clients, and changing user expectations all affect what you can and can't measure reliably.

Here's how email tracking actually works, what its limitations are, and how to use the data you collect to improve your SaaS email marketing.

How Email Tracking Works

Email platforms track opens and clicks using two simple but clever techniques.

Open tracking uses a tiny invisible image called a tracking pixel. When you send an email with tracking enabled, your email platform embeds a 1x1 transparent image with a unique URL. When someone opens the email and their mail client loads images, it requests that image from the server. The server logs the request, recording that this specific email was opened, when, and from what IP address.

Click tracking works through link wrapping. Instead of putting your actual destination URL directly in the email, the platform wraps it with a tracking URL that redirects through their server. When someone clicks the link, they hit the tracking server first, which logs the click, then instantly redirects them to the actual destination. This happens so fast that users never notice the redirect.

Both methods are reliable when they work, but modern mail clients and privacy tools have introduced significant complications.

The Reality of Open Tracking in 2026

Open tracking was once highly reliable. If someone opened your email and their client loaded images, you knew about it. That's no longer the case.

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, introduced in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, changed everything. Apple now pre-fetches all email images through their proxy servers, regardless of whether the user actually opens the email. This means your tracking pixel fires even when emails sit unread in someone's inbox. For Apple Mail users, open tracking data is essentially meaningless.

The numbers are significant. Apple Mail and the iPhone mail app together handle over 50% of all email opens. If half your list uses Apple devices, half your open rate data is unreliable.

Other clients have followed Apple's lead with varying degrees of privacy protection. Some corporate email systems strip tracking pixels entirely. Privacy-focused users might disable image loading or use email clients that block trackers by default.

What does this mean practically? Open rates are now best understood as directional rather than precise. If your open rate jumps from 25% to 35% after a subject line change, that probably indicates real improvement. But you can't take the absolute numbers at face value. A reported 40% open rate might be 25% real opens plus 15% Apple pre-fetches.

The benchmarks for SaaS email should be interpreted with this in mind. Compare your numbers to industry benchmarks, but focus more on your own trends over time.

Click Tracking: More Reliable Than Opens

Click tracking remains far more reliable than open tracking. When someone clicks a link, they're taking a deliberate action. Link wrapping captures this regardless of what mail client they use or what privacy settings they have enabled.

There are a few edge cases. Some corporate security tools scan links in emails before delivery, which can generate false clicks. A few privacy extensions intercept and modify tracking URLs. But these affect a small minority of users.

For most SaaS companies, click data is your most trustworthy engagement metric. Clicks require intent. Someone had to read your email, find a link interesting, and actively decide to follow it. That's meaningful behavior you can base decisions on.

Click-through rate (clicks divided by delivered emails) tells you how compelling your content is. Click-to-open rate (clicks divided by opens) tells you how well your email content matched your subject line's promise. Both metrics are more reliable than open rate alone.

Which Metrics Actually Matter

Not all email metrics deserve equal attention. Here's what to focus on for SaaS email campaigns.

Delivery rate matters for list health. If your delivery rate drops below 95%, you likely have list quality issues or deliverability problems that need immediate attention.

Click-through rate is your primary engagement metric. It tells you whether recipients found your content valuable enough to act on. For most SaaS emails, a click-through rate above 2-3% is solid. Above 5% is excellent.

Conversion rate connects email to business outcomes. This might be trial signups, upgrades, feature activations, or whatever action your email was designed to drive. Track this by adding UTM parameters to your links.

Unsubscribe rate indicates whether you're sending too often or missing on relevance. Keep this below 0.5% per email. If it's consistently higher, you're annoying your list.

Bounce rate tells you about list hygiene. Hard bounces (invalid addresses) should be near zero if you're regularly cleaning your list. Soft bounces (temporary delivery failures) happen occasionally and aren't concerning unless they persist.

Open rate can still be useful for A/B testing subject lines, but interpret it carefully. Relative comparisons (variant A vs variant B) are more meaningful than absolute numbers.

Tracking Without Hurting Deliverability

Tracking itself doesn't hurt deliverability, but how you implement it can cause problems.

Use your email platform's built-in tracking rather than rolling your own. Established platforms use dedicated tracking domains with good reputations. If you set up custom tracking that shares a domain with spammy traffic, you'll inherit their reputation problems.

Custom tracking domains are worth setting up. Using links.yourcompany.com instead of generic platform tracking domains builds brand recognition and avoids being blocked by corporate security filters that blacklist common tracking domains.

Keep your tracking URLs clean. Some platforms generate absurdly long tracking URLs with multiple parameters. These can look suspicious to spam filters and might get truncated in some email clients. If your platform offers URL shortening or cleaner tracking links, enable those options.

Don't overload emails with tracked links. Having 15 tracked links in a single email can look spammy. Focus on tracking the links that matter for understanding engagement.

Using Tracking Data for Segmentation

Raw tracking data is interesting. Applied tracking data is powerful.

Create segments based on engagement level. Users who clicked links in your last three emails are highly engaged. Users who haven't opened anything in 90 days are at risk. Treat these groups differently.

Use click data to understand interests. If someone consistently clicks on links about a particular feature, they're probably interested in that feature. Tag them accordingly and send relevant content.

Build re-engagement campaigns around open data. Even with Apple Mail privacy issues, open data can help identify users who might be slipping away. Send targeted campaigns to subscribers who opened emails months ago but have gone quiet recently.

Segment by click-to-conversion behavior. Some subscribers click everything but never convert. Others click rarely but convert when they do. Understanding these patterns helps you craft more effective campaigns.

Privacy Considerations for Email Tracking

Your subscribers increasingly care about privacy, and legislation in many regions gives them rights over their data.

Be transparent about tracking. Your privacy policy should explain that you track email engagement and how you use that data. Surprising people with tracking they didn't expect erodes trust.

GDPR and similar regulations require consent for tracking in some cases. If you're sending to EU residents, ensure your consent flows cover email analytics. Most SaaS companies handle this by including email analytics in their general marketing consent.

Provide easy opt-outs. While most users won't bother, making unsubscribe links prominent and respecting preferences quickly is both legally required and good practice.

Consider offering a tracking-free option. Some email platforms let you send plain text emails without tracking to users who prefer it. This is a nice gesture for privacy-conscious subscribers.

Don't use tracking data in creepy ways. Sending an email that says "We noticed you opened our last email but didn't click" might be technically possible but feels invasive. Use engagement data to improve your campaigns, not to call out individual behavior.

Setting Up UTM Parameters

UTM parameters let you track email traffic in your analytics platform. When someone clicks a link with UTM parameters, those parameters show up in Google Analytics or similar tools, telling you exactly which email drove that visit.

The essential parameters are source, medium, and campaign. For email, you typically use utm_source=email or your email platform name, utm_medium=email, and utm_campaign for the specific email or campaign name.

Example structure: yoursite.com/page?utm_source=sequenzy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=trial_reminder_day3

Adding utm_content lets you distinguish between multiple links in the same email. If you have two CTAs that go to the same page, different utm_content values tell you which one was clicked.

Most email platforms can add UTM parameters automatically. Configure this once and every link you track will include the right parameters without manual effort.

Building Useful Dashboards and Reports

Raw data is overwhelming. Good dashboards surface what matters.

Start with a weekly email performance summary. Track sends, delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes across all campaigns. Look for trends rather than fixating on individual email performance.

Create campaign-type views. Compare how your onboarding emails perform versus your re-engagement campaigns versus your product updates. Different email types should be measured against different benchmarks.

Build conversion funnels that connect email to outcomes. How many people opened the email, clicked through, and completed the desired action? This shows you where you're losing people.

Track metrics over time, not just for individual emails. A single email might underperform due to timing or other factors. Monthly trends show whether your email program is improving overall.

Set up alerts for anomalies. If your bounce rate suddenly spikes or unsubscribes triple, you want to know immediately so you can investigate.

Most email platforms include basic reporting. For deeper analysis, export data to a spreadsheet or connect to a business intelligence tool where you can build custom views.

Making Tracking Data Actionable

The point of tracking isn't to accumulate numbers. It's to make better decisions about your email program.

When open rates drop, investigate subject lines and sender reputation. When click rates drop, examine your content and CTAs. When conversions drop despite good engagement, look at your landing pages and offers.

Test based on what tracking tells you. If one segment consistently underperforms, experiment with different approaches for that group. If certain content types drive more clicks, send more of that content.

Review your tracking setup quarterly. Are you measuring what matters? Are there gaps in your data? Have privacy changes affected your metrics in ways you need to account for?

Email tracking isn't perfect, especially with modern privacy features. But imperfect data used thoughtfully is still far better than guessing. Track what you can, understand the limitations, and use what you learn to send better emails.