Read Statuses is a tool designed to enhance your email communication by letting you know when your emails have been read. This is exclusively available to our business subscribers using Spark for Teams, ensuring efficient and transparent team collaboration.
In Spark for Teams, Read Statuses have 2 different applications:
- External Recipients Read Statuses: These are used to track when external recipients which are not part of your Team open emails.
- Team Read Statuses: These provide visibility into whether your team members have read a shared email or a comment without being a recipient of the initial email.
Note: While read statuses can be helpful, it's important to remember they have no legal significance. They simply show that the email has been opened.
External Recipients Read Statuses
Here’s how you can make the most of this tool:
- Enabling Read Statuses: Activate Read Statuses on your device: Spark Settings → Composer → Read Statuses on Desktop and Spark Settings → Read Statuses on Mobile
- Sending Emails with Read Statuses: Send emails with Read Statuses enabled, ensuring you stay informed about recipient actions.
- Interpreting Read Statuses: Understand the data provided by Read Statuses to determine whether your email has been read.
Team Read Statuses
For internal team communication, Read Statuses function differently:
- Team Read Statuses: Team Member Read Statuses are determined using Team Read Indicators, which do not rely on tracking pixels.
- Team Read Comments: Easily see and manage comments left by team members regarding specific emails with visible read statuses.
- Shared Inbox Read Statuses: Shared Inboxes benefit from enhanced collaboration through Shared Statuses. When emails sent with Read Statuses are shared within your team, team members can see who has read the email. However, if you share a link to an email, Read Statuses are not included in the shared content.
Managing Read Statuses
You can manage your read statuses depending on your preference:
- Disabling Read Statuses for Your Emails: If you prefer not to track read statuses for certain emails, you can disable the feature when composing your email.
- Disabling Remote Image Loading: To enhance privacy, you can turn off remote image loading: Spark Settings → General → Load Remote Images on Desktop and Spark Settings → Security → Load Remote Images on Mobile.
Technology behind Read Statuses
For external recipients, Read Statuses utilize tracking pixels embedded in emails. However, it’s important to note that tracking pixels may not always provide a 100% accurate confirmation of whether the email was read, as recipients can disable remote image loading or use privacy-focused email clients. and other tools which block such pixels.
For team members, tracking is achieved through non-pixel-based indicators.
The Read Statuses feature is designed with recipient privacy in mind. It only shows the approximate time an email was opened and who opened the email. Spark does not process recipients’ device metadata, IP-addressess or location information.