Guides

Open and click tracking

Opt in per domain to see when an email is opened and which links are clicked.

Tracking is off by default, and you switch it on per sending domain, one setting for opens and one for clicks. A newsletter domain can track both while password resets from another domain go out untouched, exactly as you wrote them.

Turn it on

Owners and admins open Settings > Domains, pick the domain and switch Open tracking, Click tracking or both under Tracking.

Tracking is applied when an email is sent. Changing the setting affects emails sent afterwards, never ones already delivered. It only changes the HTML body; the plain-text body is never modified.

Opens

With open tracking on, SendHawk.Online adds a 1x1 transparent image just before the closing </body> tag of the HTML, or at the end when there is no <body>:

<img src="https://links.sendhawk.online/o/<token>" width="1" height="1" alt="" style="display:none">

When the recipient's mail client loads the image, the email's status becomes opened and an opened webhook event is sent. Each email counts one open: later loads of the same image, by the recipient or by a mail provider's image proxy, are not counted again.

Opens are an estimate. Some mail clients block images until the reader allows them, so a real open is never recorded, and some load every image in advance through a proxy, so an email can count as opened before anyone reads it. Treat open rates as a trend, not as proof that a person read the email.

Clicks

With click tracking on, every absolute http:// and https:// link in an href is rewritten to go through the tracking host:

<!-- You send -->
<a href="https://yourapp.com/orders/1042">View your order</a>

<!-- The recipient gets -->
<a href="https://links.sendhawk.online/c/<token>">View your order</a>

A click records the event and immediately redirects (302) to your original URL. The email's status becomes clicked and a clicked webhook event is sent with the url. Each link counts one click per email, however often it is clicked.

These links are left exactly as they are:

mailto: and tel: links
relative links
links that already point at links.sendhawk.online

The original URL is part of a signed token, so a tracking link cannot be edited to redirect anywhere else, and a link that has been tampered with answers 404 instead of redirecting.

Tracking domain

Tracked links and the open image are served from links.sendhawk.online over HTTPS.

When to leave it off

For password resets, sign-in codes and security alerts, leave tracking off. A rewritten link is one more hop between the reader and the page they need, and these emails gain nothing from an open rate. Use tracking where engagement tells you something, such as onboarding sequences and product announcements, and send those from their own domain so the two never mix.

Webhooks

Get delivery, bounce, complaint, open and click events pushed to your server, signed so you can trust them.

Suppressions

Addresses that bounced, complained or unsubscribed are blocked from future sends to protect your sending reputation.