Every email you send from ProductiveRecruit is quietly instrumented so you can tell the difference between a coach who ignored your message and one who's actually paying attention. Here's exactly what counts as an open, a click, and a profile view, plus what doesn't.
How opens are tracked
Every sent email includes an invisible tracking pixel. When it loads, that's an open. To keep the number honest, ProductiveRecruit only counts an open as real if it happens at least 90 seconds after you hit send. Anything faster is almost always an email provider prescanning the message, not a person reading it. Repeat loads from the same email within an hour don't count again, so refreshing an inbox doesn't inflate the number.
The first real open flips the email's status to Opened and triggers an in-app notification.
One honest caveat worth knowing: opens are tracked whenever anyone views the email, including you. If you reopen your own sent message or a reply thread in your email client, that can register as an open. Treat a single open as a signal, not proof a coach is actively engaged.
How clicks are tracked
Links inside your emails are rewritten so ProductiveRecruit can log a click before redirecting the recipient to the real destination. A click only counts if it happens at least 30 seconds after send, and repeat clicks on the same link within an hour aren't recorded again. Clicking your own link while you're logged in doesn't count either — so testing your own email won't skew your stats.
How profile views are tracked
Profile views work differently from opens and clicks. A view is only recorded when a coach reaches your profile through a link that came from an email you sent — including the "view my profile" link in your outreach and any profile link a coach clicks from that email. There's no generic counter for anyone who stumbles onto your public profile directly; if a coach already has your link bookmarked or finds it another way with no tracked email in between, that visit isn't attributed to a specific program.
Once a view is attributed to a college program, ProductiveRecruit waits at least 10 minutes before counting another one from that same program, so a coach clicking back and forth doesn't inflate your numbers.
What doesn't count
Bots, security scanners, and email-provider prefetches generate their own opens and clicks behind the scenes, but they're filtered out everywhere you'd see them: the activity feed, your dashboard, and notifications. Only real human engagement shows up in your numbers.
Where to see it
Every open, click, and profile view shows up as its own entry in your activity feed, each tied to the specific college program that engaged. Your dashboard rolls the same data into an Outreach & Engagement chart you can filter by date range and toggle by series.
If you enable Profile view notifications in Account Settings, you'll also get alerted the first time a coach views your profile after a gap of a few hours — off by default, so turn it on if you want to know the moment it happens.
What's next
- Not seeing opens or clicks register? Check Email not tracking.
- Review every engagement in one place in the activity feed.
- Turn on alerts for the moments that matter in Notifications.