Why am I seeing a sudden spike in Gmail email open rates?

Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that Apple’s MPP skews open rates, because it preloads remote content, including tracking pixels. This gives users more privacy but makes it hard to track engagement, as every email opened by a user with MPP activated will appear as an open.

Email marketer from Hubspot says that marketers should not rely on open rates anymore to measure deliverability and engagement. Instead consider click rates and conversion metrics.

Email marketer from EmailToolTester explains that high open rates could be from bots or security tools that check links, or the user has an overly aggressive spam filter. Additionally, MPP significantly inflates open rates, as images are pre-loaded regardless of if the user reads the email.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares that they've seen a similar jump in opens from Gmail for one of their customers, starting last week, with a 4-5x increase that wasn't across the board.

Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that inflated open rates in Gmail can be caused by Google's image proxy caching images which counts as an open even if the user doesn't actually view the email. Also, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) may falsely inflate open rates.

Email marketer from Gmass explains that a sudden spike in open rates could be due to increased user engagement, changes in email client behavior (like image pre-loading), or issues with tracking. Suggests verifying against click-through rates to see if they correlate.

Email marketer from Litmus explains that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) which was released in September 2021, pre-loads all images in emails which significantly inflates open rates, especially among Apple Mail users, even if the email is never actually read.

Marketer from Email Geeks asks if Gmail might be testing pre-fetching and if click numbers have moved at all.

Email marketer from Medium explains that high open rates could be from improved subject lines or more relevant content that's resonating with subscribers.

Marketer from Email Geeks noticed a huge spike in opens with Gmail today for one of their customers. They had an almost immediate 52% open rate. Looking at the delivery and opens, the opens happened seconds after the email was delivered, so is not sure if it is image proxy issue, but it seems odd.

Email marketer from Reddit discusses that sometimes a recent change in email marketing strategy or content may resonate better with the audience, which would improve opens. The other alternative is MPP and Image caching could be the cause

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that Apple's MPP will pre-load all email images which will cause open rates to appear artificially higher. This will impact segmentation and automation strategies that rely on open data.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection will cause significant changes in email marketing metrics by pre-loading images and impacting open rates. Marketers should adapt by focusing on other engagement metrics like clicks and conversions.

Expert from Spam Resource explains how Apple's Mail Privacy Protection will affect the ways open rates are calculated, with Apple Mail preloading the tracking pixel leading to all emails appearing to be opened, even if unread.

Documentation from Mozilla explains that web browsers use caching mechanisms, to store copies of resources, including images. Caching reduces bandwidth usage and perceived latency. Email clients, such as Gmail, also implement caching strategies.

Documentation from SendGrid details how Apple Mail Privacy Protection impacts open rates by pre-loading images in emails. This action counts as an open, irrespective of whether the recipient has viewed the email content.

Documentation from SparkPost explains that Google Image Proxy caches images from emails sent to Gmail users. This means that email clients will fetch the image from Google’s servers instead of the sender's. This action is counted as an open, leading to artificially inflated open rates. It also affects the reliability of using open tracking to measure engagement.

Documentation from Google Support notes Gmail uses proxies and caching to improve performance and security. Image caching may result in emails being marked as 'opened' when they have not been read, because the images are downloaded automatically via the proxy.