Email tracking
Email tracking that tells you who clicked, not just who opened
Keep sending from Gmail, Outlook or Mailchimp — or connect your own mailbox and let directinapp send each recipient their email from your address. Either way you see opens, clicks and per-recipient activity, with opens labelled for what they are: an estimate.
No-code setup available — free on the 30-day Business trial. No card required.
How does email tracking actually work?
Email tracking works two ways. A tiny invisible image records an open when the mail app loads it, and links are wrapped so a tap is recorded before the reader is forwarded on. Clicks are reliable; opens are an estimate, because some mail apps load images automatically and others block them entirely.
Why it matters
Clicks you can actually trust
A click goes through a real redirect, so it cannot be manufactured by a mail app — and it works in plain-text email, where no tracking image can load at all.
Opens, honestly labelled
Apple Mail and Gmail fetch tracking images automatically. We count those separately and say so on screen, instead of folding them into one flattering number.
Per recipient, not just a total
Every recipient carries their own token, so you see who opened, who clicked, and who did neither — rather than a single percentage for the whole send.
Send it yourself, or from your mailbox
directinapp never sends from its own servers. Paste each finished email into your provider, or connect your Gmail or Outlook and it sends them from your address — so your deliverability, templates and sender reputation stay yours either way.
Set it up
Three steps, no developer
01
Create a campaign and add your list
Paste addresses one per line, or as "email, label" straight out of a spreadsheet. Addresses are stored only as a hash — we never keep the list itself.
02
Copy each recipient’s email
We build it for you: an invisible open pixel for HTML emails and a tracked link that works in every email including plain text, each already carrying that recipient’s own token.
03
Send it — paste, or from your mailbox
Paste each email into Gmail or Outlook as you do today, or connect your mailbox once and send the whole list from your own address in a click. Either way it goes out under your name, never ours.
04
Read the results
Open rate, click rate and clicks-per-open, plus a per-recipient feed showing who opened and who clicked. A short guided tour walks you through the whole flow the first couple of visits.
Watch it end to end: recipients, snippets, per-person results
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is email open tracking accurate?+
No, and anyone claiming otherwise is overselling. Apple Mail Privacy Protection loads tracking images for every message whether or not a person reads it, Gmail proxies images through its cache, and many readers block images entirely. We separate machine fetches from likely-human ones and label the result an estimate.
Does email tracking work in plain-text emails?+
Open tracking does not — there is no image to load. Click tracking does, because a wrapped link is just a link. That is the main reason we treat clicks as the primary metric.
Do I have to send my email through directinapp?+
No. Pasting each ready-made email into Gmail, Outlook, Mailchimp or anything else is the default, and adds no sending step. If you would rather not copy and paste, you can connect your own mailbox and it will send each email from your address — but that is your choice, and either way nothing sends from our servers.
Can directinapp send the emails for me?+
Yes, if you connect your own mailbox. Add your Gmail or Outlook with an app password and directinapp sends each personalised email through it — so every message arrives from your address, on your own deliverability, not ours. The app password is stored encrypted and never shown again, your recipients are still only ever kept as a hash, and you can send in batches of fifty and disconnect whenever you like. Prefer to paste each email yourself? That still works exactly as before.
Do you store my recipients’ email addresses?+
No. Each address is stored as a one-way hash so a person can be counted without the address itself being kept. You can add your own label (a first name, a row number) if you want the report to be readable.
Can recipients tell they are being tracked?+
The pixel is a 1×1 transparent image and the links are ordinary short links, so nothing is visible in the message. Anyone inspecting the raw HTML can see both, as with every email tracking tool.
What is a good email open rate?+
Published benchmarks usually sit between 15% and 30%, but they are less meaningful since Apple Mail Privacy Protection began inflating open counts in 2021. Compare your click rate over time instead — it is measured the same way for everyone.
More on conversion tracking
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