7 ms·

Did you track open rates? I would be curious to see what those numbers look like.

• mfoy_ 11y ago
  Is there any reliable way to do this? Most mail clients will block receipt-type stuff by default...
  • mason240 11y ago
    I believe the trick is to put a hidden, 1px image in the email. Then you can track how many times it was requested.
    • mfoy_ 11y ago
      I'm familiar with the tracking image "trick" but I assumed most email clients wouldn't load those by default. The other comments seem to indicate I was wrong. :(
    • nandhp 11y ago
      Most reputable email clients won't load remote images in email messages.
    • antsar 11y ago
      How many mail clients load those by default nowadays? Gmail doesn't, Thunderbird doesn't.
      • mynameisvlad 11y ago
        Um, Gmail does: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en > Gmail automatically shows you the images in your messages It does have an option to turn it off, but the default is on. They will load up the image themselves, then serve it from their domain, but, as the help information shows, that still indicates an "open", it's just that all the information on who opened the email (IP address, etc) would be wrong.
        • julianj 11y ago
          I believe gmail is caching these images on their own servers. One source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-blows-up-e-mail-marketing-by-caching-all-images-on-google-servers/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/gmail-... EDIT: I get what you're saying. I guess the count would depend on how long Google caches that image- or do they load it on a per email basis?
          • mynameisvlad 11y ago
            Yep, we're on the same page. The wording they use is "In some cases, senders may be able to know whether an individual has opened a message with unique image links." but I'd expect the tracking URLs themselves to be unique (most are, they are tied to an email so they know who opened the email and who didn't) so they would most likely bypass this cache. I expect the "some cases" refers to the ones where it simply gives you a count of people who opened your email, and does it by simply having a generic tracking URL.
        • antsar 11y ago
          D'oh, thanks for the correction! I knew about their caching mechanism, but failed to realize that it wouldn't prevent this sort of tracking pixel from working due to the pixel URL being unique (in most cases).
    • semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      Assuming people read their email in HTML and has their email client set/defaulting to automatically requesting external content. Sure, for a large sample from non-technical audience such as here it's probably a good assumption, but it may not be for e.g. a small sample from a tech-savvy audience.
      • hobarrera 11y ago
        Most modern email clients (and webmail clients, and smartphone clients) hide webbugs by default, so the 1px image technique won't work. This'll only work on very very old desktop clients, or users that actually click the "show images" button.
• julianj 11y ago
  I thought about this, but I couldn't think of a way to do it reliably without setting of more spam alarms.