Common Email Tracking Issues

When it comes to email, tracking can feel a little mysterious. You send something out into the world, and then you’re left wondering: Did they open it? Did they click? Why does it show 47 opens from the same person?

Here’s the thing: email tracking isn’t an exact science. It’s based on a handful of clever tricks—tiny invisible images, link redirects, and signals from the recipient’s email client. And because it’s not exact, sometimes the data looks strange or confusing.

The good news? There are usually simple explanations. In this guide, we’ll walk through the most common tracking issues you might see inside Simplero, what’s really happening behind the scenes, and how to make sense of the numbers—so you can spend less time scratching your head and more time connecting with your people.

• How to Check the Email Status in Simplero
  • Stats for a Specific Email
  • Stats for Specific Contact
• Why an Email Might Show as “Read” but Wasn’t Actually "Delivered"
• Why an Email Might Show as "Clicked" but not "Opened"
•  Number of Opens is not correct / Email Shows Multiple Opens

How to Check the Email Stats in Simplero

Stats for a Specific Email

If you want to check the stats for a specific email:

1. Go to your Marketing -> Email broadcasts
2. Go to the delivered tab. You will see a list of all emails and their stats, including - Sent to, Opens, Clicked, Unsubscribed, Bounced, Replied, and Spam. You can click on any of those percentages to see a filtered list. 
   
   
   
   
3. You can also click on the email name to see the stats of that specific email:
   
   
   

Stats for a Specific Contact

You can review a customer’s email history by going to their Contact Page and scrolling down to these two sections:

• Emails Sent: Displays a full list of all emails that have been sent to that contact.

• Activities: Shows detailed activity, such as:

  • When the email was sent

  • If and when it was opened

  • Whether any links were clicked
    
    

Why an Email Might Show as “Open” but Wasn’t "Delivered"

Occasionally, you may notice that an email appears as open in Simplero, but the customer claims they never received it. This can be confusing, but there are a couple of common reasons why this happens:

1. Email Scanning Software

Some customers have virus or spam-checking software installed that automatically scans incoming emails before they’re delivered to their inbox. This scan can trigger the email as “opened”, even though the customer hasn’t actually seen it.

2. Email Filtering Services (e.g., Unroll.me)

Services like Unroll.me collect emails and group them into a single digest.

• These emails are stored and filtered rather than being delivered directly to the inbox.

• As a result, the email may be marked as read, but the customer never interacts with it directly.

Why an Email Might Show as "Clicked" but not "Opened"

Open tracking relies on images, but they might be blocked. Most email platforms track opens by inserting a tiny invisible image (a "tracking pixel") into the email.

If the recipient’s email client:

• Blocks images by default (common in Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.), or
• Loads only plain text, or
• Uses a privacy feature (like Apple Mail Privacy Protection)

Then the pixel won’t load, and the open won’t be recorded, even though the person did open it.

However, click tracking is link-based and more reliable. Click tracking works by redirecting links through a tracking server. If someone clicks any link in the email, the platform logs the click regardless of whether the email was technically "opened" (pixel not loaded). This is why you can see a click without an open.

This can cause a discrepancy between the clicked and the opened emails. 

Automated systems or bots such as spam filters, virus scanners, or corporate firewalls might "Pre-click" links in emails to check for safety (not a real human action), but not open images, hence not triggering an open. These can create false clicks without opens.

 Number of Opens is not correct / Email Shows Multiple Opens

Email platforms typically track opens using a tiny invisible image (a tracking pixel). When that image is loaded, it counts as an open. But this can happen multiple times for various reasons:

• Email preview panes: If a recipient scrolls or previews the email repeatedly (e.g., in Outlook), it may re-trigger the tracking pixel.
• Security or spam filters: Some email servers or security systems auto-load images to scan for threats—each one of these may count as an “open.”
• Mobile and desktop views: If the user opens the email on different devices, each device may re-trigger the pixel.
• Forwarding the email: If a recipient forwards your email, and others open it, all of those will count as "opens" under the original recipient