What is the caching of the Gmail proxy image and how will it affect Email Marketing??

What is the caching of the Gmail proxy image and how will it affect Email Marketing??

Recently Gmail announced its latest feature, called Image Proxy. Before delving into the details of this feature and its effect on the detections of email opening, let me mention that it is the only feature launched by email services in recent years that is beneficial for email marketers.

You are reading this well. The latest feature of Gmail is a great advantage for you, email marketers.

How is that?

The answer is simple. As of now, Gmail displays the images by default. When you send your HTML emails, your recipients will no longer see an email with several empty rectangles instead of images.

In addition, they will no longer have to click on the "display images within email" link to make their email "human readable".

The second advantage of this is that the images within your email will now be loaded quickly. This is because Gmail will "cache" them before their recipients open the email. Once the email is opened, the images it contains will be displayed from the Gmail servers.

Finally, you have two advantages:

Your email will be displayed with all your images enabled by default

The images within your email will load fairly quickly and your recipients will not have to wait several seconds to see the images in your email.

Are there side effects with the Gmail image proxy?

There is a side effect to this interesting feature: it makes email opening detections inaccurate. Why? This is a bit technical, so let me explain you with simple language.

When you send your HTML email, we (and all other ESPs) add a small transparent image to the content of the HTML email. This image is used to track the open activity of the recipient's email. When the recipient opens their email and uploads all the images within the email, this image is also loaded and we detect the open activity.

We register the activity. We also record the following data:

The number of times each recipient opens their email.

Unique opens

The location of the recipient (city and country)

The email client (iPhone mail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

Several other metrics

Now, however, Gmail is downloading images every time your first email arrives at your servers and before sending it to the recipient's inbox. When all the images are downloaded, the open email tracking image is also downloaded and cached.

This causes all open emails to be detected from Mountain View, California, the location of Google's headquarters. As a result, email opening detections are inaccurate, which in turn, definitely affects email senders who measure their metrics and optimize their follow-up deliveries.

Is there a solution to this dilemma?

Yes, there is, and we have it. It is already implemented in all our accounts. This solution makes unique email opening detections work as expected, which is the important metric for senders. We can not guarantee if Gmail will apply a new procedure to avoid tracking in the future, but for now, our email opening detection system works perfectly with Gmail's Image Proxy feature.

What you need to know about caching images in Gmail 

Google has introduced a number of features to Gmail lately. Along with the tabs in the new inbox and an updated mobile client, you can add image caching and automatic image enablement to the list of changes that affect email sellers. Here is what you need to know about caching images in Gmail:

On December 5, Laura Atkins reported on the Word to the Wise blog that Gmail was now caching images and serving them through its own proxy servers, an update that could change the game and could affect vendors who depend on it. the images to keep track of email openings or dynamic content geolocation

So, what is really happening and how does it affect you?

HOW IMAGES ARE USED IN THE EMAIL

Beyond its visual appeal, images play a very important role in email marketing. The images are used to track the openness and commitment of email while providing marketers with valuable data about when, where and how their campaigns are read.

Email tracking is based on the inclusion of a single image in a campaign and the download and viewing of that image in the email. Each time the image is downloaded from the server, the tracking software marks it as an open email. Combined with things like click tracking and site analysis, open image tracking helps marketers get a complete picture of how people interact with their campaigns.

To count reliably, software tools need those images to be downloaded every time someone opens an email.

ENTER: IMAGE OF CACHING

When an image is cached, it is downloaded from the original server and stored on a proxy server. Subsequent views of the cached image will always be displayed from the proxy server instead of the original server, effectively redirecting all image downloads along with the associated tracking data that comes with the image download. Gmail has started caching images for users accessing Gmail through the webmail interface: images are seen only once on the original server, while successive views will originate from the image stored in a cache on the Google proxy servers.

The Gmail team explained some of the reasons behind the change in a recent blog post. Product Manager John Rae-Grant sums it up by saying:

YOUR MESSAGES ARE SAFER AND SAFER, YOUR IMAGES ARE CHECKED FOR KNOWN VIRUSES OR MALWARE, AND YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO PRESS THE PESKY "SHOW IMAGES BELOW".

Email designers will be happy to know that Gmail displays the images by default. While we still suggest the use of alternative text for images, it is good to know that messages will be displayed as planned and that blocking images is no longer a problem for Gmail users.

Safer emails with enabled images are wonderful for Gmail users, but Google's new image caching still poses a number of problems for email scanning tools. The downloads of unique images that tracking software looks for will no longer occur. Some analysis tools will only see the initial download from Google and will not record subsequent openings, regardless of how many times a reader opens that email.

Some sellers also use geolocation to personalize email messages. They watch where the image is downloaded and feed users dynamic content according to their location. With Gmail's new image caching storage behavior, geolocation could be effectively interrupted. Instead of being able to see where a reader is located, these services will see where the Google proxy server is located, which results in dynamic content adapted to the location of the proxy server.

WHEN ARE THESE CHANGES IN EFFECT?

While it appears that changes to Gmail's image caching were launched around December 4, we have evidence that Google cached e-mail images since October. It is possible that Google has tested the caching system in a small segment of Gmail users, or with employee email accounts before distributing it to all users. Automatic image downloads were enabled in an extended deployment as of December 12, 2013, affecting some users before others.

DOES THIS AFFECT ALL GMAIL USERS?

Google's image caching only affects users who access your email through the web interface and the Gmail mobile app. People who use desktop and non-Gmail mobile applications to access their Gmail accounts will continue to download images from the original server, not from Google's proxy servers. The same goes for image blocking: Gmail users who read mail on an iPhone or iPad probably did not have the images disabled to begin, although people who log in to gmail.com will now see the images automatically unless they take action to re-enable image blocking

Fortunately, the number of people using the Gmail web interface is decreasing. Only 20% of Gmail users access their email in a browser through gmail.com. The mobile access accounts for 68% of Gmail open, while the desktop represents the remaining 12%.

While these changes initially only extended to the gmail.com addresses, they have been extended to include custom domains using Gmail as well.

Is device detection still working?

Yes and no. Device tracking will still work when an email is opened in a non-native Gmail client. For example, device tracking will work for an email sent to an address @ gmail.com that opens in Apple Mail, Outlook, the mail client in iOS, etc. Device tracking will not work for open emails in the gmail.com interface in a web browser, or use of an official Gmail mobile app. In other words, device tracking still works in places where Gmail does not cache images.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR EMAIL ANALYTICS?

If you are not yet using Email Analytics to get to know your audience, you should start. Email Analytics (EA) provides valuable information about your audience and how they interact and interact with your email campaigns.

Like all other email analysis services, EA relies on readers to download a single image to begin tracking an email. With these changes in the way Gmail handles and displays images, EA users will see some changes in their reports. To be clear, these changes only apply to open emails in native Gmail clients. Reports are not affected by emails sent to Gmail accounts that open in non-Gmail email clients.

There is now a metric of "Using Google Cache" in the email client reports, which shows the initial openings of Google's caching service.

Forwarding and printing tracking will not work through Gmail due to image caching.

EA users will see the location of Gmail's proxy servers.

Users can see a larger "Other" appearance from the time period when Google began testing image caching until we updated our reporting logic on December 6.

With these Gmail updates, it is crucial to use individual tracking with Email Analytics to properly record the analyzes. Without individual tracking, Gmail will see the image in its tracking code as the same image for all recipients, and that tracking image will be cached along with the other images in its email. This means that only the first opening using that tracking code will be registered and you will see very few openings for Gmail. The use of a unique identifier allows us to properly track e-mail openings, even when Gmail caches images.

WILL I SEE MORE OPEN? LESS?

It's hard to say yet. Due to the caching of images, Email Analytics will track the first opening of each user, in that browser/device. The following openings in the same browser/device will not be tracked since the pixel will be cached for that individual user at that time. It will continue to see unique openings for each subscriber, however, total openings may be affected. For example: if hello@xyz.com opens in Gmail in Chrome, then use the Gmail application in iOS, then Gmail in Chrome again, EA will crawl one open in Gmail in Chrome and another open in the Gmail application in iOS.

There has been a lot of poorly informed general press and the concern for Gmail is shrinking. Since tracking is based on the download and viewing of an image, and Google now shows all the images by default, it is possible that Gmail will increase. However, once those images are stored in the cache, the relay opens and the total aperture is likely to decrease since the tracking image will only be downloaded once.

So, while we can see fewer total openings compared to before Gmail extended the image caching, the automatic display of the images will mean that more of those initial or unique openings will be tracked. The number of Gmail users on your list, combined with your preferred email client, will definitely play a factor.

SOME OF MY IMAGES SEEM FUN FROM THE ROLL-OUT. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

There have been some reports of degraded images for Gmail users. While we have not witnessed the problem first-hand, some of our Community members have seen compressed images that Google compresses, even more, leading to compression artifacts and low-quality images.

The final word

Google's new storage and image storage rules came as a big surprise to most vendors. As with any new development in the world of e-mail, we will be attentive to how this publication and our monthly statistics of a market share of email clients are developed and updated accordingly.

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