THE NEW GMAIL UPDATE - AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

Summary from the TLDR Marketing newsletter

Gmail now prefetches images before users open emails, which causes tracking pixels to fire and inflates open rates. About 1% to 6% of Gmail opens are false, and total open rates rise by about 2%, so a reported 20% rate may actually be closer to 18%. These prefetch opens happen immediately after delivery and come from Google IPs, while real opens occur later through the image cache. This change reduces trust in open data and adds to earlier privacy shifts, so open rates are now unreliable signals. To deal with this, shift to metrics like clicks, conversions, and deliverability, and focus on list quality and downstream behavior.