How to Know if a Brand Opened Your Pitch

Email open tracking works by putting a one pixel image in the message. When the image loads, the sender learns the email was opened.

Most email clients now block that image by default, and corporate mail filters often load every image on arrival to scan it, which registers as an open nobody performed. So a not-opened reading usually means the pixel was blocked, and an opened reading might be a security scanner.

Neither answer is worth acting on, which is the problem. You are making a follow-up decision on data that is wrong in both directions.

A tracked link is a page you send instead of a raw portfolio URL. When the brand opens it, the page load is recorded on the server, which no image blocker prevents.

Kept records when the page was opened, how far through each video the viewer got, and whether they clicked through to your site. That is behaviour rather than a ping.

It counts conservatively. A page load that looks automated is not counted, and the number Kept shows undercounts rather than flatters. A report you cannot trust in your favour is worse than no report.

Three opens this week, two videos watched to the end, one click through to your site. That brand is deciding. Follow up today and reference the video they watched twice.

One open, ten seconds, nothing else. They looked and moved on. Worth one follow-up with a different angle, not three.

Zero opens after seven days. The pitch probably did not reach a person. Before you follow up with the same contact, check whether there is a better one, because chasing an address nobody reads is chasing nothing.

If they opened and did not reply, follow up once, briefly, and mention the thing they looked at. Saying you noticed they had a look at the skincare piece and offering to talk rates is a different message from just checking in.

If they never opened it, try a different contact before you try the same one again.

Two follow-ups is the ceiling. After that you are not being persistent, you are being remembered for the wrong reason.

Most creators follow up on a timer: a week has passed, so send the nudge. That treats a brand who read your pitch three times the same as one who never saw it.

With open data you follow up in order of interest. The warm ones first, on the day they are warm, with something specific to say. The cold ones get a different contact or a different brand.

The pitches do not change. The order and the timing do, and that is most of the difference between a pipeline that converts and one that does not.