Tracking Delivery, Opens, and Clicks

Knowing that you sent an email is not enough. You need to know whether it arrived, whether the investor opened it, and whether they clicked through to your marketing page. Deal Run tracks every step of the email lifecycle so you can focus your follow-up calls on the investors most likely to make an offer. This guide explains how tracking works, what data is available, and how to use it to close deals faster.

How email tracking works

Deal Run uses two standard tracking mechanisms built into the email infrastructure. These are the same technologies used by every major email platform -- they are reliable, widely supported, and do not require the recipient to install anything.

Open tracking: the tracking pixel

When Deal Run sends an email, it embeds a tiny 1x1 transparent image (called a tracking pixel) in the HTML body of the message. This image is hosted on Deal Run's servers with a unique URL for each recipient. When the investor opens the email and their email client loads images, the pixel is requested from Deal Run's server. That request is logged with the recipient's identifier and a timestamp.

The result: Deal Run knows exactly who opened your email and when. If an investor opens the same email three times over two days, all three opens are recorded with individual timestamps. This gives you a sense of how engaged they are -- an investor who opens your email multiple times is actively considering the deal.

There are limitations to open tracking. Some email clients (notably Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection enabled) pre-fetch all images automatically, which can register a false "open" even if the investor never actually read the email. Conversely, some clients block image loading by default, which means a real open may not be tracked. Open rates are best understood as directional indicators rather than exact counts. Industry-wide, tracked open rates typically undercount actual opens by 10-15%.

Click tracking: redirect links

Every link in your email is wrapped in a Deal Run redirect URL before sending. When the investor clicks a link -- for example, the "View Full Deal Package" button -- they first hit Deal Run's tracking server, which logs the click with the recipient identifier, the original destination URL, and a timestamp. The investor is then immediately redirected to the actual destination (your marketing page). The entire redirect happens in milliseconds and is invisible to the recipient.

Click tracking is more reliable than open tracking because it does not depend on image loading. If an investor clicks a link, it is tracked -- there are no false negatives. Click data is your most actionable metric because it represents a deliberate action: the investor saw your deal, was interested enough to click, and is now on your marketing page reviewing the full details.

Delivery statuses

Every email sent through Deal Run progresses through a series of delivery statuses. These statuses are updated in real time on your outreach dashboard and on each recipient's contact record.

Sent

The email has been submitted to your Gmail account via the Gmail API and accepted for delivery. This means Gmail has the message and will attempt to deliver it. "Sent" does not guarantee the email reached the recipient's inbox -- it means it left your outbox successfully.

Delivered

The recipient's mail server accepted the email. This is the strongest signal that the message reached the investor's mailbox. However, "delivered" can include emails that land in the spam or promotions folder, not just the primary inbox. There is no way to detect folder placement from the sender's side.

Opened

The tracking pixel was loaded, indicating the recipient (or their email client) opened the message. As noted above, this can include false positives from privacy-focused email clients and may miss some real opens from clients that block images.

Clicked

The recipient clicked one or more links in the email. This is the most valuable engagement signal. Each clicked link is tracked individually, so you can see whether the investor clicked the main CTA, a specific photo, or any other linked element.

Bounced

The email could not be delivered. Bounces come in two types:

• Hard bounce -- The email address does not exist, the domain is invalid, or the server permanently rejected the message. Hard bounces indicate bad data in your buyer list. Deal Run automatically marks hard-bounced addresses and excludes them from future campaigns to protect your sender reputation.
• Soft bounce -- A temporary delivery failure, such as a full inbox, a server that is temporarily unavailable, or a message that exceeds the recipient's size limit. Deal Run will retry soft bounces automatically up to three times over 24 hours. If delivery still fails, the status changes to a permanent bounce.

Complained

The recipient marked your email as spam in their email client. This is the most serious negative signal. Complaint rates above 0.1% (1 complaint per 1,000 emails) can damage your Gmail sender reputation and cause future emails to land in spam folders for all recipients, not just the one who complained. Deal Run automatically marks complainers and excludes them from all future campaigns.

The campaign dashboard

After sending a blast, the outreach page for that deal shows a campaign summary with aggregate statistics. This dashboard gives you a quick snapshot of how your outreach is performing.

Aggregate metrics

The summary bar at the top of the outreach page shows four key numbers:

• Total Sent -- The total number of emails delivered in this campaign.
• Open Rate -- Percentage of delivered emails that were opened. A healthy open rate for investor outreach is 25-40%. Below 20% suggests your subject line needs work or your list quality is poor.
• Click Rate -- Percentage of delivered emails where the recipient clicked at least one link. A good click rate for deal blast emails is 5-15%. This is the most important conversion metric because clicks lead directly to marketing page views and offer submissions.
• Bounce Rate -- Percentage of emails that could not be delivered. Keep this below 5%. If your bounce rate exceeds 10%, your buyer list likely contains stale or incorrect email addresses and needs to be cleaned.

Timeline view

Below the summary bar, a timeline chart shows engagement over time -- opens and clicks plotted on a timeline starting from the moment you sent the blast. This visualization helps you see when engagement peaked. Most opens happen within the first 2 hours of sending, with a second smaller peak the next morning when investors check email they missed the previous day. If you see a third peak days later, it usually means your email was forwarded to another investor -- a strong signal of interest.

Recipient table

The full recipient list shows every investor who received the email, with columns for their name, email, delivery status, open count, click count, and last activity timestamp. You can sort this table by any column. The most useful sort is by click count descending, which puts your hottest leads at the top.

Each row is color-coded for quick scanning:

• Green highlight -- Clicked. This investor viewed your marketing page. Call them.
• Blue highlight -- Opened but did not click. They saw your subject line and opened the email but were not compelled to click through. Consider a follow-up email with a different angle.
• No highlight -- Delivered but not opened. Either they missed it, it went to spam, or the subject line did not interest them.
• Red highlight -- Bounced or complained. Do not contact these investors again through email.

Per-recipient drill-down

Click on any investor row in the recipient table to see their full engagement history for this campaign. The drill-down view shows:

• Delivery timeline -- Exact timestamps for when the email was sent, delivered, first opened, and each subsequent open.
• Click details -- Which specific links the investor clicked, with timestamps. If they clicked the main CTA and also clicked a link to your company website, both are logged separately.
• Marketing page activity -- If the investor clicked through to your deal's marketing page, the drill-down also shows their activity on that page: how long they spent, which sections they viewed, and whether they started filling out the offer form.
• Cross-campaign history -- If you have sent this investor emails about other deals, their engagement history across all campaigns is accessible from this view. This helps you understand whether this is an active buyer who consistently opens your emails or a cold contact who rarely engages.

Using tracking data to prioritize follow-up

The tracking data in Deal Run is not just a dashboard to look at -- it is a prioritization tool for your next actions. Here is how to translate engagement data into deal-closing activities:

Clicked = call immediately

An investor who clicked through to your marketing page has self-selected as interested. They have seen the property details, the photos, the numbers. They are evaluating the deal right now. Pick up the phone and call them within 24 hours of the click. "Hey John, I saw you checked out the Katy property -- do you have any questions? Want to schedule a walkthrough?" This is the highest-conversion touchpoint in the disposition process.

Opened but did not click = send a follow-up

These investors saw your email but were not compelled enough to click. This does not mean they are not interested -- it means your email did not quite hook them. Send a follow-up 2-3 days later with a different angle. If your first email led with price, try leading with the profit potential. If you used the full deal blast template, try a shorter, more personal message. See Follow-Up Sequences for automating this process.

Not opened = re-send with a new subject line

If an investor did not open your email, the most likely reason is that the subject line did not grab their attention or the email landed in a secondary folder. Wait 3-5 days and re-send the same deal with a different subject line. Do not change the body -- just the subject. "Katy TX deal -- $42K equity spread" might work better than "New Investment Opportunity in Katy." Keep the re-send to non-openers only so you do not annoy investors who already engaged.

Bounced = clean your list

Hard bounces mean the email address is bad. Check if you have an alternative email for that investor, or re-run a skip trace to get updated contact information. Remove permanently invalid addresses from your buyer list to keep your bounce rate low and protect your sender reputation.

Complained = do not contact again

An investor who reported your email as spam is telling you they do not want to hear from you. Respect that signal completely. Deal Run automatically suppresses these contacts, but you should also avoid calling or texting them. Move on to investors who want to do business with you.

For step-by-step instructions on sending your first campaign, see Sending Your First Email Blast. To build multi-touch sequences based on engagement data, see Setting Up Follow-Up Sequences.