Has this person opened anything I sent?
Somebody is about to book, or has gone quiet, and you want to know whether your last three emails ever landed in front of them. Open that person in Contacts and the answer is on their own page.
The prompt
“Has [name] opened anything I sent recently? Show me what they opened and clicked on [my site].”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
Where it is
Your customers, then Contacts, then the person’s name. Their page already carried History: what was sent to them and what happened to it. Underneath that, a section headed Opens and clicks says what they did with it.
What it tells you
One sentence first, then the rows. The sentence is the answer in the form you would say it out loud:
Priya Shah opened 4 emails and clicked 2 links in the last 12 months; the latest was Your October workshop notes are ready on 3 October. 1 open was fetched by a mail app and may not have been read.
Under it, one row per open and per click, newest first:
- what happened - opened, or clicked
- which message - its subject line, whether it was a campaign or a receipt. Only a message that never had a subject reads as “one of your automatic emails”
- when, the name you gave the link if it was a click, the mail app, and the country
The name of the link is the short label bernard gave it when it built the message, the same one on the results table under the campaign. The page does not show the web address the link went to. This is a page for reading what happened, not a set of live links to press.
The page shows twenty at a time. If there are more, a Show more button fetches the next twenty. Bernard can read up to a hundred at once when you ask in chat.
The two silences, and why they are different
An empty section is never a verdict on the person. The sentence above the rows says which of two things happened.
They never agreed. Nobody is recorded unless they have said yes on their own screen, so most people on most lists have no record at all and never will. Can I see who opened my email? covers who agrees and how.
They agreed and have done nothing yet. That is a fact about the record, not about the person. Mail apps differ, and plenty of people read an email without anything being fetched.
Either way Bernard says “nothing recorded” rather than “did not open”. The second one would be a claim about somebody it never watched.
If the person stopped the recording later, their earlier activity stays and the sentence says when they stopped. If your site is not recording at all, the section says that too, above everything else, so you are never left reading zeros and wondering.
Rows marked as fetched
Some opens are marked Fetched by a mail app, so it may not have been read. That is Apple Mail’s privacy setting collecting the pictures before the person has looked. The row stays, because the fetch really happened, but it is never added to the counts, and the sentence says how many there were, so if the number looks low you can see why.
A Gmail open is different and does count. Gmail fetches when the person opens the message rather than before it, so bernard treats it as a reader.
Asking Bernard instead
Has Priya opened anything I sent recently?
Bernard reads the same records the page shows and gives you the same sentence, so the two can never disagree. Name the person by their email address if you have two people with the same name. It is a read: nothing changes, nothing is sent, and there is nothing to approve.
You can also ask the other way round, for a whole campaign rather than one person - Who clicked the link in my email? is that half.
Where it fits
Where do the people who buy, join or ask end up? is the tour of Contacts itself. Who can see that I opened this email? is the same feature written for your reader, and is worth reading before you tell anyone what you can see. How do I tidy my mailing list once a year? uses these records for a different job: deciding who has gone quiet enough to stop emailing.
Questions people ask
- Where do I find this?
- Open Your customers, then Contacts, then the person. Under History, which says what was sent to them, there is a section headed Opens and clicks. It reads your records, so there is nothing to approve and nothing changes.
- Why does it say there is nothing to show?
- Two different reasons, and the sentence above the list says which. Either this person has never agreed to opens and clicks being recorded, so nothing about them was ever kept, or they have agreed and have not opened anything yet. Bernard keeps those apart on purpose.
- Can I take a blank list as proof they are ignoring me?
- No, and Bernard will not put it that way either. Some mail apps never fetch anything, and somebody who has not agreed is never recorded at all. A missing record is not proof that nobody read your email.
- What does Fetched by a mail app mean under a row?
- That open was made by a mail app on its own, before the person had looked. Apple Mail’s privacy setting does this before the person has looked. Bernard shows the row and marks it, rather than hiding it or passing it off as a reader, and it is never added to the counts.
- Does a Gmail open count?
- Yes. Bernard treats a Gmail open as a real open, because Gmail fetches the pictures when the person opens the message rather than before, so there is a reader behind it. The Apple fetch happens before anybody looks, which is why the two are treated differently.
- How far back does it go?
- Up to a year. After that the individual records are removed and only the campaign totals remain. Twenty are shown at a time, with a Show more button for the rest. When you ask Bernard in chat, it can read up to a hundred at once.