<b>Open tracking: the pixel that hurts your deliverability</b>

<b>Open tracking: the pixel that hurts your deliverability</b>
Every sender enables open tracking by default. For cold email, it's often a net negative.

The tracking pixel rewrites your links and embeds an image from a shared tracking domain — a known spam signal. Worse, since Apple Mail Privacy Protection, open data is largely fiction anyway.

Smartlead, Instantly, and Lemlist all let you disable open tracking per campaign. Many top senders turn it off entirely and measure on replies and meetings booked.

Pros / Cons
— Open tracking on: vanity visibility, mild deliverability drag, polluted data
— Open tracking off: cleaner sends, better placement, lose top-of-funnel signal
— Link tracking: keep it only if you use a custom, warmed tracking domain

Who it's for: turn opens off for cold; keep tracking for warm nurture where engagement data is reliable.

Verdict: 4.5/5 for disabling open tracking on cold campaigns. The data was broken and the pixel was costing you placement. Track replies — the only metric that survives privacy changes.