Recently Gmail changed its default settings to "Always use https" for everyone. This is a good move for security reasons; however it could have a negative impact on your email marketing open rates. Here's why.

The norm is to host email images on HTTP pages - on a Web site, email platform or separate image server. Now, when viewing email in Gmail with images hosted on HTTP pages you will get a security warning in your browser. Why? Because the Web browser is warning you about "non-secure URLs" (HTTP) on a secure (HTTPS) page.

AND the security warning you get will depend on what browser you use to check your email. For example:

• Firefox shows a broken padlock in the bottom right corner
  (click on image to view full size)

• Internet Explorer shows a warning box that you have to click away from to carry on browsing (click on image to view full size)

Understandably, this could be having an impact on your email marketing open rates because the warning message will stop a user from downloading the images, therefore the open is not tracked. Or worse, the receiver may think that the email is malicious and may delete it, or even hit the spam or junk button.

What can be done?

Hosting your own email images over HTTPS is a quick solution to the problem. However, keep in mind that all email platforms use a 1x1 tracking GIF to track opens, so this also needs to be hosted over HTTPS.

Google needs to find a better solution to this problem sooner rather than later, because when Google does something everyone else tends to follow. Therefore, I predict that most Web based email clients will eventually make the change to default HTTPS access too.

In the meantime, I recommend analyzing your email marketing open rates by domain to see what impact this may be having on your Gmail subscribers.

###

Related Resources:

• Subscribe to Inside Lyris HQ our monthly online-marketing newsletter.
• Download free online-marketing guides, tools and webinars in the Lyris Online-Marketing Resource Center.