Why does one contact have so many gross opens

The counts for a gross open encompass many factors. To set the premise for the gross open metric, first it is important to know that in HTML messages there is a tracking GIF pixel. When the email is opened, the recipient must download the images for this tracking gif to report back to the Acoustic Campaign servers that the email was opened. The gross open metric equals the number of times the tracking pixel renders and counts per render in various scenarios.

If the message is forwarded by an original recipient from an email client (not a Forward to Friend type in the email), then any opens or tracking pixel downloads associated with the forwarded email populates for the original recipient's open data.

If these two users are viewing emails in a preview pane, then each time the message is scrolled in the inbox either after images were automatically downloaded or initially downloaded manually, an open would be rendered back to the original recipient. Even if the email is on the top of emails in the Inbox and images were automatically downloaded, every time the email client is opened it would count as an open.

Furthermore, if the email is open already, and recipient clicks the Click to View on the top of the email multiple times, each click is counted as an extra open. Finally, a click in a text version is also counted as an open towards gross opens, but only when there is a click tracked link in the text body of a text email.