The email tracking feature works based on an image pixel inserted into the email body that you are sending to your client. When someone opens the email this image pixel also gets a request. It’s hosted on our servers and when we get the request, we assume that someone has opened the email.
When you are using the Outlook client in some cases when the email body is long or you are writing the email for a very long time, Outlook scrapes the image pixel to load the image in the email body and it results in an ‘Email Open’ event.
A similar situation happens when your team member in the same office opens the email, that’s also a false event. In fact, the problem is so prevalent that some vendor calls this event as ‘Someone’ opened the email.
When you are using our Chrome extension to track your email with Gmail we smartly block the unwanted image pixel requests from your browser but this is not doable in Outlook and the outlook environment is limited for us.
So how can you know who actually opened the email. If you notice we also provide you City and Country information along with the Email Client. So if the email open is originated from the exact same country and city you are writing the email from, less are the chances that it was opened by your recipient. So when it comes to Outlook you will have to rely on this additional information to really make sure that the email was opened from a different location.