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1. In the HTML email put <img src="http://myserver/invisible.gif"> 2. Serve up http://myserver/invisible.gif http://myserver/invisible.gif with a process
by staunch 15y ago
1. In the HTML email put
<img src="http://myserver/invisible.gif">
2. Serve up http://myserver/invisible.gif http://myserver/invisible.gif with a process that trickles down an endless GIF image a few bytes at a time.
3. When the connection to the endless GIF dies, call that the "reading" time.
4. If a "reading" time is under some threshold call it "deleted".
That's how I did it a few years ago anyway.
- zrgiu_ 15y agoi never load images automatically in my emails, and I bet a lot of other people do that too
- derwiki 15y agoIf the sender is ReturnPath certified, Hotmail and Yahoo! automatically load images. Those two providers account for a large portion of email on the internet, so there's definitely value in this product.
- derwiki 15y agoThat's a neat trick. After hearing about Mirapoint, I built a simple proof of concept that uses time-delayed redirects to gauge how long a user has attempted to load an image: https://github.com/derwiki/redirect_tracker https://github.com/derwiki/redirect_tracker Like most email metrics, it's lacking -- but this is still -a little- more information, and that goes a long way in email marketing.