How To Know If Someone Read Your Email In 2026

Can You Actually Tell If Someone Read Your Email?

So how can you tell if someone read your email? That question has become difficult to answer with the way webmail services and external tools currently work.

Email service providers (ESPs) or third-party solutions track if an email was opened using built-in features. They include read receipts and pixel or image and link tracking. But these trackers can only confirm that an email has been displayed on your recipient's screen. The "open" signal isn’t absolute proof that they read — or understood — your message. 

A false open can occur without any human interaction when webmail services pre-load trackable images or links for faster display. Meanwhile, privacy settings or automated processes may block these trackers and prevent open events from being recorded.

Open rates losing credibility

In Dollar Pocket's analysis of 3 million+ email campaigns in 2025, true human open rates were 25% to 35% versus that year's 42.35% average email open rate.

Since email open data can be unreliable, the question “can someone see if you opened their email?” is no longer as pressing as it used to be.

Still, “how can your email be tracked” remains a topic that marketers continue to explore and rely on to determine campaign success.

How Email Open Tracking Works

If you want to know how to see if someone read your email, you can use an email open tracker. Of course, you have to make do with the indicators hinting at recipient attention.

The tracking platform embeds a line of code into your message that creates a tracking pixel. It's typically a 1x1-pixel image. When someone opens your message, the email client loads the pixel tracker on their email browser.

In the process, your server logs various information from the recipient, including email opens:

• Their IP address, device, and operating system
• Timestamps and repeat interaction
• Any clicked links

Tracking pixels don't collect private browsing history or bank details.

Open rates vary, according to one's industry. However, they can’t tell for sure whether someone has read a message or not.

The recipient’s webmail service may also trigger an open event when they activate their preview pane. Open tracking depends on images being loaded. If the email client blocks images in the preview, the tracker won’t record it as an open event.

Read Receipts — When They Work (and Mostly Don’t)

Read receipts are messages that confirm a recipient opened an email and when. They’re helpful for personal email open tracking. You can receive these notifications by enabling Request read receipt on your email platform. Many marketers do so, hoping to check if an email was read.

The problem is, this feature requires recipients to click Yes or Send receipt. People can find this extra step annoying — or invasive. Another limitation is accessibility. Read receipts are available in the paid versions of Gmail (Google Workspace) and Outlook (as part of a Microsoft 365 or Exchange account).

Alternatively, other marketers use a third-party tracking system, which uses tracking pixels instead of asking the recipient's explicit consent.

Like with big email services, though, mailbox users can prevent trackers from working by blocking image uploads. European and U.S. data privacy laws can also make requests for an email read receipt a tricky affair.

Privacy Tools That Break Open Tracking

Email clients’ privacy-focused updates have made it complex to accurately track open rates:

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)

This Apple privacy feature had the largest impact, with its users cornering nearly half of email recipients worldwide, according to Indectron.

The MPP pre-loads all email content, causing your message to register as "opened." This "pre-fetching" process also works on Gmail messages opened on Apple devices.

The change inflated open rates since its launch in 2021, but it doesn't represent human attention to messages. This makes open rates alone poor and risky indicators for timing outreach and follow-up messages.

Gmail image caching

Gmail started pre-loading images in 2013. In 2022, analytics firms detected the mailbox service's image pre-fetching behavior. Gmail proxy servers cache images when a user opens an email. When the recipient reopens the same message later, the tracking pixel will load from Google's server, not from the sender's server. As a result, subsequent opens aren't recorded.

Corporate security platforms

Businesses may set up security scanners to protect their company from malicious content, links, and external images.

Ultimately, privacy solutions muddle campaign performance analytics. When open rates are no longer as authentic as they should be, marketers assume recipients are interested when they really aren't. Sales teams are also likely to misjudge the best time for follow-ups.

How Marketers Check If Emails Are Being Read (At Scale)

With privacy tools distorting email open data tracking, marketers have shifted their focus away from individual emails.

Instead of figuring out “How do I know if someone opened my email?” they examine recipient behavior patterns. They watch out for rising frequency in opens or gradual declines over time, along with other engagement data, like clicks.

Fewer or consistently low opens across campaigns may mean recipients have lost interest. Messages rank lower in their inbox the more they ignore your emails. Another possibility is that your subscriber has become inactive or stopped using that mailbox. Altogether, this consistent drop in responsiveness in various campaigns leads to list decay. Healthy lists start with address verification using tools like VerifiedEmail.

Check if your email is valid with VerifiedEmail

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The next section discusses other signals to help you identify signs of list decay and understand subscriber intent more clearly.

Better Signals Than Just "Opened"

Marketing and sales teams now spend less time determining how to tell if someone read your email. They look at click-through rates (CTR), reply rates, and conversions to gauge campaign effectiveness.

These metrics not only measure engagement. They also help predict sales and refine your strategies.

• CTR: indicates genuine interest since it shows someone actively clicked a link in your email.
• Reply rate: signifies that your message was relevant enough to spark a response.
• Conversions: show which campaigns drive revenue.

You can replicate your successful sequences and use them to improve past and underperforming ones.

More importantly, engagement sustains your inbox visibility. ESPs monitor these positive actions over time to assess your sender reputation. When users show consistent engagement, webmail services recognize you as a credible source. ESPs then adjust your email's placement or inbox ranking accordingly.

Using Engagement Metrics to Guide Your Strategy

There's no single technique that can answer the question “can you tell if someone opened your email and read it?" Tracking tools can only report data that suggests interest or disengagement.

Although open rates have become less dependable, tracking data remains valuable when you study various engagement signals together.

Ultimately, effective email tracking isn't about chasing confirmation from individual messages. Instead, they're more about interpreting engagement patterns that support long-term deliverability.