5 ms·

I wonder how they track this? I haven't been able to attend any local Meetups for example (and sometimes just delete the email outright), but this is one of the

by mpyne 14y ago

I wonder how they track this? I haven't been able to attend any local Meetups for example (and sometimes just delete the email outright), but this is one of the few I want to keep receiving because, you know, someday I'll have time...

jonathanjaeger 14y ago
Very good point -- I will delete emails from Meetup that I have no interest in, but certain verticals I will open the email to check it out. You can customize these emails in Meetup a bit based on categories you choose, but they'd have to be pretty sophisticated to track unread emails by meetup type.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Most emails these days contain graphics or other 'call home' sorts of bugs that are activated on render. Its another form of analytics. Especially easy to do for 'shopping' sites.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
seshagiric 14y ago
Pixel tracking is one way. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/faqs/tracking/advtrack/3520294.html http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/faqs/tracking/advtrack/...
espadagroup 14y ago
Hey, I'm on the marketing team at Fab. We send our email through Sailthru. Like most email providers tracking is done through image pixels. So we're able to pull data on which users have not opened certain emails over a given time period.
- betterunix 14y ago
  For what it's worth, you would have gotten no data from me. My email client will not load anything external and will not even attempt to render HTML mail. Also, I am in a minority with this, but when I receive an HTML message without any plaintext portion I delete it; if it is an unsolicited message I mark it as spam.
shabble 14y ago
There are a few sneaky ways in addition to the per-user URL tracking image people have mentioned. There was some internet drama about facebook (ab)using bgsound attribute of html mail to detect even when people have disabled image viewing. ReadNotify (as reviewed by jgrahamc[2]) also seems to use similar tricks, including loading remote resources via css url() and similar. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-uses-bgsound-to-see-if-you-opened-an-e-mail/10003 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-uses-bgsound-to-... [2] http://blog.jgc.org/2006/10/peek-inside-readnotify.html http://blog.jgc.org/2006/10/peek-inside-readnotify.html
- LandoCalrissian 14y ago
  I don't really understand how the background css url() one is any different than using a tracking pixel, don't all client block background along with normal images?
  - shabble 14y ago
    I guess it might just be a bug in some (web-)mail clients which just stripped <img>, ... tags or something rather than all potentially url-referenced assets. Not certain though.

by mpyne 14y ago

jonathanjaeger 14y ago

Very good point -- I will delete emails from Meetup that I have no interest in, but certain verticals I will open the email to check it out. You can customize these emails in Meetup a bit based on categories you choose, but they'd have to be pretty sophisticated to track unread emails by meetup type.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Most emails these days contain graphics or other 'call home' sorts of bugs that are activated on render. Its another form of analytics. Especially easy to do for 'shopping' sites.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

seshagiric 14y ago

Pixel tracking is one way. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/faqs/tracking/advtrack/3520294.html http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/faqs/tracking/advtrack/...

espadagroup 14y ago

Hey, I'm on the marketing team at Fab. We send our email through Sailthru. Like most email providers tracking is done through image pixels. So we're able to pull data on which users have not opened certain emails over a given time period.

betterunix 14y ago
For what it's worth, you would have gotten no data from me. My email client will not load anything external and will not even attempt to render HTML mail. Also, I am in a minority with this, but when I receive an HTML message without any plaintext portion I delete it; if it is an unsolicited message I mark it as spam.

shabble 14y ago

There are a few sneaky ways in addition to the per-user URL tracking image people have mentioned. There was some internet drama about facebook (ab)using bgsound attribute of html mail to detect even when people have disabled image viewing. ReadNotify (as reviewed by jgrahamc[2]) also seems to use similar tricks, including loading remote resources via css url() and similar. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-uses-bgsound-to-see-if-you-opened-an-e-mail/10003 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-uses-bgsound-to-... [2] http://blog.jgc.org/2006/10/peek-inside-readnotify.html http://blog.jgc.org/2006/10/peek-inside-readnotify.html

LandoCalrissian 14y ago
I don't really understand how the background css url() one is any different than using a tracking pixel, don't all client block background along with normal images?
- shabble 14y ago
  I guess it might just be a bug in some (web-)mail clients which just stripped <img>, ... tags or something rather than all potentially url-referenced assets. Not certain though.