Salesforce - Considerations for Tracking Emails

Salesforce provides email tracking and engagement data, for emails sent from Salesforce, directly on the record's Activity Timeline and through reporting. When reviewing and assessing this data, there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you understand it correctly.

Access the Service?

  • Requires an active user account; log into Salesforce with SSO

Issues/Questions

How do I interpret the Email opened status in the Contact's Activity Timeline?

  1. The Opened and Last Opened notation is the time stamp when ANY recipient has opened the email
    • The opened status includes CC: and BCC: recipients!

How do I interpret the First Opened and Last Opened fields in my Email Messages report? 

  1. The First Opened and Last Opened fields record the date and time stamp when ANY recipient has opened the email
    • The opened status includes CC: and BCC: recipients!

How do I ensure the Opened status data shows only engagement with the TO: email recipient?

  1. Do not copy yourself or other internal team member on the email
    • Instead, to review your Salesforce email sends > click on the Reports tab > select 'All Reports' on the left > then in the search box top right type > "My Email Messages" > click on the returned report to run
      • Clone this report if you would like to change any of the columns or adjust the filters
  2. Turn off automatic BCC on email sends directly from Salesforce
    1.  Click your avatar (top right) > then click Settings
    2.  On the left under Email > click My Email Settings
    3.  Under Outgoing Email Settings > Question "Would you like to automatically BCC emails to your return address?" > Select No
    4.  Click Save

Does Salesforce have any mechanism to automatically exclude internal email opens from the 'customer' email engagement metrics?

  1. Salesforce does allow IP ranges to be excluded from email engagement data. However, remote work prevents excluding internal colleagues with this method from being a usable solution. 

Where can I find supporting documentation?