Gmail Caches & Automatically Loads Images - Watch Your Email Marketing Stats

Google changed the rules for email marketers in early December by caching and automatically loading images in Gmail. This may not seem like a big deal but of you're doing any type of email marketing then pay attention.

When an email is opened the unique image is pulled from the sender's server each time, recording an open and allowing information such as user IP address, geolocation, browser and device info to be passed back. This has been a long standing technique for collecting email stats.

In the past you could only see these stats for people who took the time to enable images within Gmail. Now, with Google automatically downloading images you'll get an far more accurate number of people who opened your email. Unfortunately, this update also comes with some drawbacks...

Yes, the first open is tracked but, since Google is caching and storing the image on their own servers you won't know if an email was revisited.
Since the image is only pulled once, you won't be able to update it in real-time. Be smart and test your images prior to mailing.
The caching system will also not support images larger than 10MB.
The big hit is that now that Google is requesting the image to store, you will get the IP address and device info of a Google server NOT the actual user.

Keep an eye on your stats over the next few months because this update is still rolling out to Gmail users. A rough survey among our members showed that only about 1 of 8 Gmail users are seeing this.

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Gmail Caches & Automatically Loads Images - Watch Your Email Marketing Stats

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