Email Tracking
How Email Tracking Works
Zephyr can track when recipients open, click links in, or reply to your sent emails. When tracking is enabled in Settings, Zephyr automatically injects invisible tracking signals into every email you send. These signals include a tracking pixel (detects opens), link rewriting (detects clicks), read receipt headers, and reply detection via Microsoft Graph. A confidence score from 0 to 100 percent is computed based on which signals have fired.
Enable Tracking
Go to Settings and find the Email Tracking section. Toggle on Track sent emails to start tracking. All emails sent through Zephyr after enabling will be tracked automatically. You can disable tracking at any time and future emails will be sent without tracking signals.
Tracked Emails Dashboard
Open the Workflows tab to see the Tracked Emails section between Recent Activity and Workflows. Each tracked email shows the recipient (or 'John + 2 others' for multi-recipient emails), subject, current status (Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Replied), and how long ago it was sent. Cards are color-coded: amber left border and clock icon for pending (Delivered), green border and tick for confirmed engagement (Opened, Clicked, Replied), red for failures. Click any card to expand and see the full recipient list, event timeline with timestamps, confidence score, and for multi-recipient emails, how many of the recipients opened it.
Send Tracked Reply
When viewing an AI-generated reply draft in the Assistant tab, click Send tracked to send the reply through Zephyr's tracking pipeline. This injects a tracking pixel and rewrites links before sending via Microsoft Graph's reply endpoint, so you can monitor opens and clicks on your replies. You can edit the draft in an inline textarea before sending.
Workflow Tracked Replies
When you have email tracking enabled in Settings, workflow-sent replies (via the send_reply action) are automatically tracked too. The reply goes through the same tracking pipeline as manual tracked replies, so you can see open status, link clicks, and reply detection for automated workflow responses in the Tracked Emails dashboard.
Real-Time Status Updates
The Tracked Emails section polls for updates every 30 seconds while the component is mounted, so you see the latest read status without manually reloading. Open notifications work even when the Tracked Emails section is collapsed.
Status and Confidence
Each tracked email has a status badge showing the highest confirmed signal. Delivered means the email left the server. Opened means a real human (not a bot) loaded the tracking pixel with sufficient confidence. Clicked means a link was clicked. Replied means the recipient replied. The confidence score uses multiple signals including sender fingerprint matching, request timing, User-Agent analysis, and open sequence behavior to distinguish real recipient opens from bots, scanners, and sender self-views.
Smart Bot Detection
Zephyr automatically detects and filters out false opens from email security scanners (Mimecast, Proofpoint, Barracuda), Gmail image proxies, Outlook WebView background loads, and other automated systems. These are logged as scan events in the timeline with descriptive labels like 'Gmail proxy' or 'Outlook WebView' so you can see exactly what happened. Only confirmed human opens with sufficient confidence update the tracking status.
Sender Self-View Detection
When you view your own sent email in Outlook, the tracking pixel loads with your browser. Zephyr detects this by comparing a fingerprint captured at send time (User-Agent, language, IP range) with the pixel request. If they match, the open is logged as a scan event instead of a real open. The pixel URL also includes a signed fingerprint parameter for additional verification. This prevents your own views from inflating open counts.
Open Notifications
Pro and Enterprise users can enable Notify me when emails are opened in Settings. When enabled, Zephyr shows an in-app toast notification the first time a tracked email is opened, displaying the recipient name and subject. For multi-recipient emails, the toast says 'Someone opened' since the tracking pixel cannot identify which specific recipient triggered it. Only the first open triggers a notification to avoid spam.
Multi-Recipient Tracking
When you send a tracked email to multiple recipients (To, CC, BCC), all recipients receive the same tracking pixel. This means Zephyr can detect that the email was opened and count total opens, but cannot attribute opens to specific recipients. The expanded card shows 'X of Y recipients opened' and lists all recipients. If all recipients share the same email domain, a note indicates they are from the same organization, which means opens may appear from the same IP address. This is an inherent limitation of email tracking pixels and is consistent with how all major email tracking tools work.
Chat Command
Type /track in the chat input to see all your tracked emails without switching tabs. The command shows recipient, subject, status, confidence score, and time for each tracked email.
Privacy and Retention
Tracking records contain only metadata such as recipient, subject, and event timestamps. No email body content is ever stored. All tracking data is automatically deleted after 30 days via DynamoDB TTL. You can also manually clear all tracking data at any time using the Clear all button in the Tracked Emails section.
Testing Email Tracking
To verify tracking is working:
Tracking Limitations
Email tracking relies on invisible signals that have inherent limitations. Some email clients block external images entirely, preventing pixel-based open detection. Corporate email security gateways may pre-fetch images, but Zephyr's smart bot detection filters these out automatically. Gmail proxies images through its own servers, which Zephyr detects and labels as 'Gmail proxy'. Multi-recipient emails cannot attribute opens to specific recipients. When you view your own sent email, Zephyr's sender fingerprint detection usually filters it out, but no system is 100 percent accurate. The confidence scoring model weighs multiple signals to give you the most reliable read status possible. Tracking data is metadata only and is automatically deleted after 30 days.