If you look at any guides on how to track Gmail location on Google, you will be told that you need to get an email header which contains an IP address and then need to paste it into the right site, and that’s great, except it’s not really accurate as most emails contain IP address of clients such as Gmail that do not reflect the actual location of your recipient.
Not to mention that this traditional approach isn’t time-efficient.
In this guide, we go over how to track the location of emails automatically, the two different methods, the ethics, the limitations, and the benefits.
Standard Email Location Tracking Method vs This Method
Snov.io Email Tracker is a productivity tool that helps you track when your email is opened and links are clicked, reminds you about follow-ups, and lets you schedule emails in Gmail/G Suite to be sent at a later time. Email Tracker also sends you real-time push notifications. Free to use, but includes a 'Sent with mailtrack' signature. If you are not on one of the paid plans, emails tracked with mailtrack.io has a 'Sent with mailtrack' signature appended to them. It does not look like Inky is a real email program, rather it is just an interface so you can read gmails, microsoft emails, etc all from the same place. This is not a replacement for gmail. Also, there is a free version but to have the features you have to pay. So no, Inky is not a solution to replace gmail and it is also not a free solution. With 'GeoTrack for Gmail' Chrome extension, your emails are automatically tracked. As soon as your email is read, we will notify you and provide you with the geolocation of the email opening. You can also track clicks on any links you have included in the body of your message.
The standard method of tracking an email location consists of two steps.
- Finding the IP address of an email.
- Looking up that IP.
This method can work but is very limited as it constantly requires work on your side and is not always accurate.
If you were to apply it though, here’s what you would need to do:
- Open the email you want to find the location of.
- In Gmail/G Suite, you would now need to press on the 3 dots on the top-right corner of the email followed by Show Original.
Now, you will see the entire email with a lot of text that was not there before.
How this would look normally is that you would now need to go to the right site, and paste the header (all the text before the actual email) which would result in the site analyzing for the location of the site.
The issue with this approach?
- It takes a lot of time to investigate the location of every email.
- The services that analyze the location of emails can use and sell the data you provide them with. Not ideal for the safety & confidentiality of emails.
- This method is rarely accurate as a lot of clients such as Gmail don’t provide with the IP of recipents often resulting in the wrong country details and no city details.
The More Effective Gmail Location Tracking Method:
If you have a Gmail account or a G Suite account, instead of having to go through all these steps, you can simply download a Chrome extension called MailTag.
MailTag is primarily an email tracker allowing people to know when emails are opened, but it’s also a great tool for finding out where your emails were sent from.
It’s more accurate, quicker, and safer.
Why?
- You aren’t copying any data from your email into someone’s website. MailTag does not have access to the content of your emails.
- You get accurate information on the location of your recipient as you aren’t dependant on a header that often is misleading.
- You right away have info on the location of your email recipents without having to do anything.
Here’s an example of the same recipient that we know for sure is from Australia as that’s where the company is based.
On the first image, you see the info provided by a site where you paste in header info, meanwhile, on the bottom, the data is from MailTag:
The Benefits of Gmail Location Tracking:
The biggest benefit of tracking email location apart from simply knowing where the person is, is the insights that you get that can allow you to increase conversion rates.
For instance, by knowing someone’s location, you can understand someone’s culture better and thus write emails in the right tone. On the other side, you can also time your emails better if you know someone’s timezone which can drastically increase reply rates on your follow-ups.
Of course, there are also some rare use cases like our users that decided to use it to catch his wife cheating, but that’s a completely different story and not what MailTag is generally used for.
With MailTag you can also know when people open your emails, though. And for many, especially in the sales/marketing world, that’s what will be far more useful.
The Limitations of Tracking the Location of Emails
Of course, just like with all technology, there are some limitations.
An IP address of an email can briefly locate anyone in the world.
Best Free Email Tracker
Except, when a VPN is used.
If someone is connected to a VPN and they open your email, they might look like they are somewhere else.
However, the majority of VPN users use a VPN only to unblock blocked streaming services, and in most cases, will not be using a VPN.
It is worth knowing about this limitation, though.
The Ethics of Email Location Tracking
When you copy data from an email into a random website that also happens to be free, that’s concerning.
After all, how does that website make money?
Is it by selling data?
MailTag isn’t able to collect data from your emails. If it did, it wouldn’t be in the Chrome Store.
That’s How Gmail Tracking Location Works
Email location tracking is possible, but the approach that is shown on the top-ranking posts isn’t really accurate.
With MailTag? You can track both when people open your emails and where they open them. Why not test it out for yourself with a 14-day free trial with no need for a card at sign-up? Just download the extension from the Google Chrome Store.
Do prospects you target with a well-written cold email ever see it? Nobody knows. Uncertainty is a constant in sales emails… Except it shouldn’t be this way. Enter Gmail read receipts.
Gmail read receipts are the only way to know whether prospects read your emails. But with a bit of research, it becomes obvious that the default option for Gmail read receipts is quite poor.
So, I looked around. After a bit of research, it became obvious that email tracking extensions are the way to go. I chose five that achieve the perfect implementation of Gmail read receipts — for free.
Without any further adieu, let’s dive in!
What Gmail read receipts should do
In many ways, email feels stuck in the 1990s. Modern messengers (think WhatsApp) offer you a glance-able way to see if your message was seen. Email platforms insist on a dangerous level of ambivalence.
Has a prospect actually seen your message? You never know!
But knowing is what allows you to come up with a better email strategy. Does nobody open your emails? Time to change the subject line. Still nothing? Maybe you didn’t put enough thought into your cold email’s opening sentence.
In these terms, a Gmail read receipt is an essential feature. But when I first looked for a way to add Gmail read receipts, I was a bit dumbfounded. The implementation is basically useless.
Gmail’s default option doesn’t cut it
I bet a lot of people don’t even know that Gmail has a native read receipts feature. I didn’t. So this video came as a complete surprise:
It’s actually possible to have read receipts turned on in Gmail without third-party tools? That’s great! Why isn’t everybody using it?
Turns out, there are more than a couple of reasons why. For starters, you probably can’t use them. To get access to native Gmail read receipts, you have to be on a paid G Suite account. Receipts are turned on manually in the Google Admin console (here’s how), and they don’t work with regular @gmail.com accounts.
Now, don’t go about this just yet. The implementation of native Gmail read receipts renders them useless. Why?
For a Gmail read receipt to work, your prospect has to manually confirm that they read an email. Via an annoying pop-up message. That… isn’t optimal.
My guess? 99% of prospects would ignore the Gmail read receipt pop-up. Confirming that they read a message feels like promising to send a reply. And why would anyone want to promise you anything before they even read your email?
No wonder I have never received an email with Gmail read receipt turned on. And if I did, I’d probably click ‘Not now’.
Thankfully, it’s not the only solution.
Use email tracking extensions for the best Gmail read receipts experience
Email trackers are not some crazy new invention (in fact, we already covered some of the most popular email trackers out there). They’ve been around for years. And they are great!
Read receipts extensions allow me to have a WhatsApp-like experience for Gmail. Having emails augmented with little ✔✔ icons feels great. It feels seamless. Like email should feel. And it helps immensely to understand when you need to follow up.
Here are the five best Gmail read receipt extensions and how they work:
#1 — MailTrack
Available for: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge
Only want to add glance-able read receipts to Gmail? MailTrack is a strong contender for being the best on this list.
It’s an extension for Gmail that is fast, lightweight and available for most modern browsers. Often email tracking is one of the features of a big sales solution (think SalesHandy or Yesware). But MailTrack is simple. It does one thing and does it great: shows Gmail read receipts in the ‘Sent’ folder.
Developers promise that the Gmail read receipts feature will stay ‘free, forever’. A claim which helped MailTrack gain a 4.5-star rating on the Chrome Web Store.
The only caveat? MailTrack adds its own signature into your emails (which you can manually remove). As people can judge your cold emails on the email signature, it’s better to buy a Pro subscription ($59 a year). Besides ease of mind, it comes with click tracking, metrics, and allows MailTrack to work on your phone.
#2 — Gmelius
Available for: Google Chrome, Opera, Safari
Free Email Tracking For Gmail - Mailtrack
Gmelius is one of the oldest and most popular extensions of its kind. As opposed to MailTrack, it comes loaded with features and calls itself a ‘lightweight CRM’.
It’s not wrong. Gmelius lets you schedule emails, create email campaigns, delegate messages to members of your team… Even create Kanban boards! And yes, it also tracks your emails for you.
It might be more than you need if you’re working solo (or already have a sales tech stack that includes some of the other features), but for small teams of sales reps, Gmelius is perfect. Its email tracking feature is fast and reliable. You get unlimited Gmail read receipts for free (again, with a branded signature). Gmelius Premium improves the service with per-recipient tracking, click metrics and more.
#3 — MailTag
Available for: Google Chrome
I love how sleek MailTag’s implementation of Gmail read receipts is. It integrates well into Gmail’s interface and stays out of sight when you don’t need it.
What’s best? MailTag allows you to track several metrics (like clicks and reopens) right in your inbox. Hover over the read receipt, and it will show all the necessary information in the drop-down. MailTag can even highlight how many times your prospect reopens your message.
The only downside is that MailTag doesn’t have any kind of a free subscription. You can take it for a spin for a 14-day trial, and after that, it’s $9 per month. And the subscription includes other great sales-first features, like scheduling emails.
#4 — Free Email Tracker
Available for: Google Chrome
Cloud sync platform CloudHQ hosts more than a dozen productivity-focused Chrome extensions. One of them is an inconspicuously-named Free Email Tracker.
Free Email Tracking For Gmail - Mailtrack
I’m happy to report that the name doesn’t lie. Free Email Tracker does track emails. For free!
It’s simplistic and convenient. But it does pack a few extra features under the hood. For example, Free Email Tracker supports SMS notifications for Gmail read receipts. Turn them on for your most important cold emails — and you won’t miss an opportunity even if you’re not in front of your PC. That’s something I didn’t find in similar extensions for Gmail read receipts.
By default, Free Email Tracker adds a branded signature to your emails. You can manually remove it — or pay a $5 monthly fee to support the developers, and your signature will remain unchanged. I wasn’t able to find any other restrictions for this extension.
#5 — BananaTag
The previous extensions we mentioned in the article are all great at adding read receipts… But only for Gmail. What about Outlook?
I found BananaTag to be a good alternative if you’re working with Microsoft’s email app. Its email tracking feature is as reliable and insightful as any we mentioned above.
The approach to read receipts, however, is less sleek. No more WhatsApp-like ‘ticks’. BananaTag sends you an email each time a prospect reads your message. Informative, but a bit obtrusive.
But if you’re using Outlook, there aren’t many options out there. BananaTag integrates well into the interface. For $10 a month, it lets you track up to 100 emails per day. Additional metrics, attachment tracking, and scheduling are also included.
There is also a free plan, limited to 5 tracked emails per day. It should be just enough to see if BananaTag’s worth it for you.
Don’t want to be tracked?
Gmail read receipts is a great feature and something that I’d love to see implemented by default. But sometimes, you might not want to be tracked yourself.
For example, if you’re out of office and want to read incoming messages, but not reply to them before the leave is over. Why send mixed signals to potential partners?
PixelBlock is an extension for Google Chrome that blocks all email tracking attempts. It also shows you the tracking source. It does what it does, and does it well.
It’s a good moment to remind you that prospects can use extensions like PixelBlock. So while relying on Gmail read receipts is useful, don’t rely on them too much.
Conclusions
Gmail read receipts are a great tool for salespeople. They allow you to get rid of the uncertainty that comes with cold emails. Choose the right extension, and you’re good to go. Just make sure to set your expectations right.
(Oh, and if you’re in the mood for even more Google Chrome extensions for salespeople, we have just the article for you.)
Now — do you have a favorite way to get Gmail read receipts? Do you use them at all? Share your thoughts below!