In this article, you'll learn how to track when a contact opens your email and use this data to create more effective automation.
Using the Additional automation trigger, you can track:
- Contacts who opened an email and clicked a call-to-action button
- Contacts who opened an email and have not clicked a call-to-action button
- Contacts who haven't opened an email.
You can then apply different tactics and automation paths for each group, all within your automation.
How to set up the Additional automation trigger
1. Activate the Additional automation toggle in your Email node.
2. Choose the next step that will be triggered when the contact opens this email.
You can choose for the trigger to perform every time a contact opens the email or only for the first time.
💡 Use the Every time option carefully. You can accidentally resend the same information to the same contact.
Use cases
Continue automation only for engaged contacts
You can trigger the next step of your campaign based on whether a contact has opened your email, not just whether it was sent. For example, if you're sending weekly course lessons, you can send the new lesson only to contacts who opened the previous email.
Re-engage inactive contacts
You can re-engage these contacts through other channels or by sending them another email. Tag contacts who haven’t opened your email, then use a Condition block after a Delay to trigger automation for these inactive contacts.
Find your most engaged contacts
You can identify contacts who have opened your email multiple times, indicating strong interest in your product or content. Tag these contacts as potential buyers. To track engagement, use a Custom User Field to count email opens and set up an Action (connected to an Additional Automation trigger) to increase the counter each time a contact opens an email.
Last open and last clicked
Identify contacts who may not want your emails or have an inactive address by tracking their overall engagement. Create a date/time Custom User Field and update it with the Additional Automation trigger. Set up an action to save the date and time of the last open or click.
Other
You can get creative with email open data. Track open times, optimize your campaigns for the best sending windows, and discover your average open rate.
Email Open Tracking is a powerful way to build smarter automation paths based on contact behavior. It’s definitely worth exploring!