We get asked a lot how Hatchbuck (and other email marketing services) track email opens. To track an email open, we place a super-small, single pixel sized image into each email.
Hatchbuck will track an open when this pixel is viewed (or when someone clicks on a link within the template).
Gmail recently made a change in how they display email images. They will no longer ask you to “display images below.” Initially, Gmail wanted to protect it’s users, by requiring you to click to display images. Now they will be checking all images for viruses and malware ahead of time.
So how will this affect your Hatchbuck opens?
It depends on how many of your email list recipients use Gmail really. Since there are a LOT of Gmail users, this change should be a good one for e-mail marketers. In theory, this should make Hatchbuck more efficient in tracking unique email opens.
You can check out an article on the update from Mashable here: http://mashable.com/2013/12/12/gmail-automatic-image-display/