You can only know whether a client read your proposal if the proposal can report back, and a PDF attached to an email cannot. Once it is delivered, the file opens in the client's own inbox and reader, and nothing returns to you. Even when you can see that it was opened, that fact matters less than most people expect. The useful signals are how often the client comes back, how long they stay, and whether someone else starts reading.
An open barely separates a yes from a no
Proposify, which sells proposal software, analysed 742,137 proposals sent through its platform in 2025 for its State of Proposals 2026 report. Buyers viewed 93 percent of the proposals they went on to sign. They also viewed 80 percent of the ones they rejected. If your only question is whether the client opened it, the answer will be yes for most of the deals you lose as well as the ones you win.
The same report shows where the difference does appear. A winning proposal was viewed 12 times on average, against 8 for a losing one. Buyers spent an average of 25.3 minutes on proposals that closed and 15.8 minutes on those that did not, about 60 percent more. And when more than one stakeholder viewed a proposal, Proposify says the close rate rose by 20 percent.
The timeline gives you a sense of normal
Proposify reports an average of 34 minutes from sending a proposal to the prospect opening it, and 2.5 days from that first open to the deal being marked won. Those two numbers are a useful yardstick. A proposal still unopened the next morning has usually gone to the wrong person, landed in a folder, or arrived on a bad week. A proposal opened on day one and quiet for a week has probably stalled, and a short, specific note will do more than waiting.
Whether they opened it is the least informative thing a proposal can tell you.
How to read each pattern and what to send
- Not opened after a day. Resend with a two line note and the proposal in the body of the email, and check you sent it to the person who owns the budget.
- Opened once, briefly. They skimmed it. Ask one question about the part that matters most, such as whether the timeline in section two works for them.
- Several visits over a few days. The proposal is being weighed. Offer a short call to walk through anything unclear, rather than asking whether they have made a decision.
- Long time on the pricing page. Price or scope is the open question. Offer two options at different levels instead of waiting to be asked for a discount.
- New sessions on a different device or at an odd hour. It may have been passed to a colleague. Ask who else is involved, and offer to send them a short summary.
Send a link the client can read in a browser
To see any of these patterns, the proposal has to open somewhere that can measure it. That means sharing a link to a viewer rather than attaching the file. The email itself can still be tracked; Google's help page on images in Gmail notes that senders may know whether an email with an image was opened. But an email open says the message was opened. It says nothing about the proposal inside it.
How Fast Mail Tracker measures a proposal
In the Fast Mail Tracker dashboard you upload the proposal as a PDF, up to 15 MB, and the share link is copied for you to paste into your Gmail draft. The client opens it in an ordinary browser, with no account and nothing to install, and the pages are drawn with Mozilla's PDF.js library. Time is only counted for a page while it is actually on screen, using the browser's Intersection Observer API, and only while the tab is visible, using the Page Visibility API. A proposal left open in a background tab overnight does not turn into eight hours of reading.
The document page shows every viewing session with the time read and how many pages it reached, a bar for each page with the time it held and the share of sessions that got there, and a tag on the page that held the most attention. Security scanners that open the link are kept in the list, marked as a scanner, and are left out of the view count and the reading time. Two honest limits: a link pasted into an email shows each session as an anonymous viewer, because we list sessions separately rather than guess who they belong to, and if a client downloads the file and forwards it, later reads of that copy are invisible.
Fast Mail Tracker is in early access while Google's security review completes, so places are limited; to see how your next proposal is read, use the install button below.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if a client has read my proposal?
Send the proposal as a link to a viewer that measures reading, instead of attaching the PDF. An attached file opens in the client's own inbox and reader and sends nothing back. A tracked viewer can show each visit, how long it lasted and which pages were read.
Does opening a proposal mean the client is interested?
Not on its own. In Proposify's State of Proposals 2026 report, covering 742,137 proposals sent in 2025, buyers viewed 93 percent of the proposals they signed and 80 percent of the ones they rejected. Repeat views, reading time and additional readers separated the two far better.
How long do buyers spend reading a proposal they accept?
Proposify reports an average of 25.3 minutes on winning proposals and 15.8 minutes on losing ones, with winning proposals viewed 12 times on average against 8. These figures come from Proposify's own customers and describe averages, not a rule for any single deal.
Can I tell who else at the company read my proposal?
Usually not by name. Fast Mail Tracker lists each viewing session separately, with its time and pages reached, and shows a shared link's sessions as anonymous rather than guessing. A new session on a different device or at an unusual hour is a reason to ask your contact who else is involved.