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Pazko
Pazko
New Participant
March 16, 2022
Solved

Email Open Tracking

  • March 16, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3216 views

Has anyone else experienced an open rate decline in Marketo?
I have been racking my brain trying to figure out where we have gone wrong. I thought it was a deliverability issue but I recently discovered a significant discrepancy between Marketo reports and Email on Acid.
According to Marketo, a recent campaign we deployed was 25.6%. Email on Acid on the other hand shows 42% which is along the lines of what we should expect.

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Best answer by SanfordWhiteman

Based on experience, 3 explanations come to mind:

  • if you aren’t using a branding domain, the Marketo pixel can be easily identified as a tracking pixel, so may be treated differently (just as marketo.com can make its way onto tracking protection lists)
  • if you are using a branding domain but your DNS infrastructure is messed up, the pixel download could fail sometimes and not others; this would affect Clicked Link in Email activities as well
  • if you have dynamic content it’s possible to break the tracking pixel image for some recipients and not others (i.e. by having an open HTML comment — I’ve seen it!)

2 replies

Vinay_Kumar
Vinay_Kumar
Community Manager
March 17, 2022

@pazko  In addition to @sanfordwhiteman points

Filter Bot Activity can also be one of the reasons for less open rates in Marketo. 

If you have enabled Filter Bot Activity then you may see a drop in email opens and clicks as false numbers are filtered out.

Please check Admin>Email>Bot Activity to confirm. 

Pazko
PazkoAuthor
New Participant
March 17, 2022

@vinay_kumar confirmed Filter Bot Activity is disabled.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution
New Participant
March 17, 2022

Based on experience, 3 explanations come to mind:

  • if you aren’t using a branding domain, the Marketo pixel can be easily identified as a tracking pixel, so may be treated differently (just as marketo.com can make its way onto tracking protection lists)
  • if you are using a branding domain but your DNS infrastructure is messed up, the pixel download could fail sometimes and not others; this would affect Clicked Link in Email activities as well
  • if you have dynamic content it’s possible to break the tracking pixel image for some recipients and not others (i.e. by having an open HTML comment — I’ve seen it!)
Pazko
PazkoAuthor
New Participant
March 17, 2022

This is really helpful. I think it may be branding domain but your DNS infrastructure. I'll ask our IT team to look into this.

Thank you @vinay_kumar and @sanfordwhiteman!

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