How does Levitate track opened emails?

Levitate tracks whether an email is opened or not by inserting an invisible pixel in the body of the email at the time the email is written. After it is sent, we can detect when the pixel is loaded again, therefore triggering the "read" status.

My report says 100% of my emails have been read. Is this correct?

It depends! For emails going out to 20 recipients or more - as much as we'd LOVE it if it were 100% open rate, sometimes it is too good to be true. Here are some top reasons why that might be the case:

It is possible for the sender to look at each email in their Sent Messages folder, therefore loading the pixel and triggering the read status. However this is typically for smaller group sends since most people aren't clicking over 100 emails.
When your email server is automatically scanning each email when sending - this is likely the culprit. Please reach out to your IT admin to turn off capabilities or work with our team to make exceptions (this is sometimes possible).
Recipients using Apple Mail register an open whether or not they read the email. See the next section.

What's up with messages opened by Apple devices?

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) preloads email content in the background, making it appear as if emails are opened even when they aren't. It also blocks tracking pixels and hides users' IP addresses, preventing senders from accurately tracking email opens, location, or device details.

Levitate detects these background loads and labels them Automatically opened on the contact's timeline instead of Viewed. However, automatic opens still count toward the campaign's % viewed figure in the Email Report. A campaign sent mostly to Apple Mail users can show a viewed rate close to 100% even if few people actually read it.

I know a recipient read my email, so why doesn't Levitate show it?

It is very common for some recipients' Outlook app to NOT display any incoming images in emails by default. In this case, their computer is refusing to load any images, and therefore the tracking pixel isn't being loaded to trigger the "read" status.

Which stats should I rely on?

Opens are useful for comparing campaigns over time, but they can be counted too high (scanners, Apple Mail) or too low (blocked images). For a real measure of engagement, rely on:

Clicks — a recipient selected a link in your email.
Replies — a recipient wrote back to you. Automatic replies are counted too (see below), so check your inbox to see what each reply says.

A high open rate with no clicks or replies usually points to automatic opens, not real readers.

Why does my report show replies I can't find?

Levitate counts a reply whenever a message linked to your campaign arrives in your connected inbox. That includes automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages, and can include other automated messages, such as read receipts sent by a recipient's Outlook. A campaign can therefore show replies that no one typed.

If the report shows a reply you can't find, check your junk or spam folder and your archive or All Mail folder, in case a mailbox rule or filter moved it. To see which contacts replied, open the campaign in Tags & Reports > Email Report and click the Replied count.

My campaign shows 0% viewed. Was it delivered?

A campaign with no opens at all, when your other campaigns to the same list show opens, may not have reached recipients' inboxes. For example, the recipients' mail servers may have sent it to junk or quarantine. It's also possible that the tracking pixel didn't load. To find out which, check the following:

Save a copy of the sent email. Open the email in your Sent Items folder and save or download it as an .eml file. Send this file to Levitate Support so we can confirm the tracking pixel was included.
Ask your IT admin to run a Message Trace. If you send through Microsoft 365, your IT admin can run a Message Trace in the Exchange admin center for the campaign's subject line and send date. The trace shows whether each message was delivered, sent to junk, quarantined, or rejected by the recipient's server.

What does it mean when my emails fail?

If around 10% of your emails failed, especially if it's the first time you've sent to that particular group, that just means the email addresses are incorrect and we were not able to deliver to them.
If all of your emails are failing, then something else is going on. Most of the time it means your email server is unable to deliver the messages due to a bad connection. The next step would be to reconnecting Levitate to your email by visiting this link: https://secure.levitate.ai/#/user/connect-email
If your emails first started out sending fine but stalled or started failing, chances are your email server has some restrictions and Levitate has hit the max values. The next steps would be to reach out to your IT admin and figure out what kind of error messages you are getting. Perhaps we need to lower the threshold for max number of emails sent per day or per minute.