Pipedrive email tracking: how it works and what it misses

Pipedrive can show you when a client opens an email you sent from it and when they click a link inside. You need email sync, which comes with the Growth plan and higher, and you have to switch tracking on before you send. It tracks only the email, though, and cannot see whether the client opened an attached proposal.

What Pipedrive email tracking records

According to Pipedrive's help article, tracking covers two events. An open is recorded when a small invisible image (a tracking pixel) in the email loads. A click is recorded when the recipient clicks a link in the email, and link tracking works even when images are blocked.

Both apply only to emails sent from Pipedrive, and only to the people you put in the To, Cc or Bcc fields. Tracking has to be on before you click Send; you cannot add it to an email that has already gone out.

How to turn on email tracking in Pipedrive

First connect your mailbox through email sync. Then set the defaults:

1. Open the account menu in the top right corner.

2. Go to Personal preferences > Email sync > Account and scroll to the advanced settings.

3. Turn on the options you want for every email: tracking when recipients open emails, tracking when they click links, and alerts in Pipedrive for tracking activity.

Once tracking is enabled, the email composer shows two icons: an eye for open tracking and a cursor for link tracking. Click them to switch tracking on or off for one email. This does not change your default settings.

Where to see who opened your email

• Notifications panel. If you turned on alerts, every open and click appears under the lightbulb icon in the top right corner.

• Sales Inbox. Filter by "Tracked emails", open a conversation and hover over the eye or cursor icon. A solid icon means the event happened, and the tooltip gives its exact time.

• Detail views. Tracking shows on the linked deal, lead, project, person or organization. The owner of the email sees it, and so do teammates who can see the linked items when the email's visibility is set to shared.

• Insights. The emails performance report counts sent, received and opened emails and can split them by open, link and reply tracking.

When Pipedrive email tracking gets it wrong

Pipedrive's help lists several such cases. Opens are not registered when the recipient's email client blocks images or tracking. Tracking may also fail for an email with an empty body or one forwarded many times. With several recipients, you see that the email was opened but not who opened it, and a person who receives a forwarded copy is not tracked at all.

You can also trigger a false open yourself. If you look at the sent email in your own Sent folder in Outlook or Gmail, the pixel loads and Pipedrive records an open. Pipedrive's advice is to check tracked emails only inside Pipedrive. The weaknesses of pixel tracking in general are covered in how to tell if someone read your email.

What email tracking does not tell you about a proposal

An email open says nothing about the attachment. If you send the proposal as a PDF, Pipedrive does not know whether the client opened the file or what they read in it.

Pipedrive has a separate tool for documents. Smart Docs creates proposals and quotes from templates and shares them as a link to a read-only PDF. With view tracking on, you choose whether Pipedrive emails you on the first view, on every view, or not at all. Each shared version shows its number of views. Smart Docs comes with the Premium and Ultimate plans; on Lite and Growth it is a paid add-on. Pipedrive's help does not say that it shows which pages were read or for how long.

How to track proposals from inside Pipedrive with Sellizer

Sellizer works in Pipedrive through a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox. After you log in, it opens as a sidebar on the right, next to the CRM view. The steps are in the help article on the Pipedrive integration.

1. Open a deal. The "Offer List" tab shows every proposal sent to the contact in that deal.

2. In the "Add Offer" tab, upload a file or pick a template or a document you prepared in Sellizer. The recipient's details come from Pipedrive, so you do not type them in.

3. Optionally add an expiry date, a "Request Contact" or "Request Contract Template" pop-up, or automatic follow-ups.

4. Send it through Sellizer (you write the subject and message and send it now or schedule it), or copy the link and send it yourself, for example in an email from Pipedrive.

You can send a proposal the same way from a contact or from a task linked to a deal. When the client opens the proposal, a green statistics icon appears next to it in the list. The details show how long the client spent on each page and which pages they skipped (proposal analytics). You also see whether they downloaded, printed or forwarded the proposal and how many people viewed it. The heatmap and session replay show where on the page they lingered and in what order they went through it. You get an SMS the first time the client opens the proposal and an email on every open.

The email open and the proposal open are recorded separately, so you know whether the client got as far as the document. Automatic follow-ups stop by themselves when the client replies, once your mailbox is connected and reply detection is on. The Pipedrive integration page has the details. For other tools that connect to Pipedrive, see top Pipedrive integrations. What happens to a proposal after you send it is covered on our proposal tracking software page.