Plunk provides built-in open and click tracking for emails sent through campaigns and transactional sends. Tracking data appears in campaign analytics and can trigger workflows via email.open and email.click events.
Open tracking
When open tracking is enabled, Plunk embeds a small invisible image (a 1×1 pixel) in each outgoing email. When the recipient’s email client loads the image, Plunk records an open event for that contact.
Limitations to be aware of
- Image blocking: If a recipient has disabled automatic image loading in their email client, the pixel will not load and the open will not be recorded. Open rates are always an undercount.
- Pre-loading: Some email clients and security scanners pre-fetch images before the recipient sees the message. This can produce open events that do not represent a human opening the email. Apple Mail Privacy Protection is a well-known example.
Open tracking data is therefore best used as a directional signal, not a precise measurement.
Click tracking
Plunk rewrites links in your emails to point to Plunk’s tracking servers. When a contact clicks a link, Plunk records the click event, then immediately redirects them to the original URL. This is transparent to the recipient.
The email.click event includes the original destination URL in the link field.
Limitations to be aware of
- Security software: Some corporate email gateways and endpoint security tools follow every link in an incoming email to check for malware. This can generate click events that do not represent a contact clicking the link.
- URL length: Rewritten tracking URLs are longer than the original. This is rarely a problem but worth noting if you have strict URL length requirements.
Configuration levels
Tracking is configured at the project level in Project Settings → Tracking. There are three levels:
| Level | Behavior |
|---|
| Enabled | Open and click tracking is active for all emails sent from this project |
| Disabled | No tracking pixels or link rewriting. No open or click events are generated |
| Marketing only | Tracking applies only to emails sent via templates and campaigns. Transactional emails sent via the API are not tracked |
Use Marketing only if you send a mix of transactional emails (where untracked delivery is preferable) and marketing campaigns (where engagement data is valuable). This keeps transactional links clean while still capturing campaign analytics.
Tracking data in analytics
For campaigns, open and click data appears on the campaign’s analytics page in the dashboard, including:
- Open rate and total unique opens
- Click rate and total unique clicks
- Per-link click counts
You can also receive tracking events in real time by setting up workflows triggered by email.open or email.click. See Webhooks for how to forward these events to your own application.