Verifying Emails are read

[FreemanTech]

I am looking to create a simple mailing list program. The one part I don't understand is how to ensure that an email is read. For instance, if I am sending emails to 1000 individuals I want to see if over time any of these individuals never open an email.

Therefore, I need to see if an email was opened and when. What's the best and easiest way to automatically do this, assuming we are using a variety of email programs.

I would guess I need to embed something into the email, but how and what?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[sdarken]

I don't think there is any way to do this for ALL email programs since some do not support HTML emails. You will only be able to get a partial list of people that did open your email. You could develop this list by embedding a call to a graphic on your websever which contains a unique parm eg: www.yourdomain.com/images/spacer.gif?id=fred@fredsmail.com

You will then need to extract these ids by processing your web logs.

[FreemanTech]

Hmmm...that's basically what I was already thinking. What about an image of some sort. I've heard tell of embedding banners that actually record the IP and such by referring back to an .ASP page of some sort. Been a while, so I don't remember all the details...

[suresk]

There are actually a few ways you can do this. The most popular way is used in email lists that send mostly links, and that method is to change the links so they record the email address of someone who clicks. Then you can delete everyone who doesn't click, and save resources. You can also just embed an image tag that would look like this:

http://yoursite.com/i.php?e=you@yoursite.com

Then the script would read that email address and store it in a db or flat file for future use. Of course, this only works when you can send (and your subscribers can view) HTML emails. And you have to use an email program that will allow you to merge in the email address for each subscriber. If you use Lyris, it is, I believe $subst{Recip.Email**.

I sell a script and run a service that can do this, and there is a discount for Geekvillage members. Contact me privately if interested.

[gerard]

Originally posted by FreemanTech
I am looking to create a simple mailing list program. The one part I don't understand is how to ensure that an email is read. For instance, if I am sending emails to 1000 individuals I want to see if over time any of these individuals never open an email.

Therefore, I need to see if an email was opened and when. What's the best and easiest way to automatically do this, assuming we are using a variety of email programs.

I would guess I need to embed something into the email, but how and what?

Any advice would be appreciated.

With HTML emails you can use an image to track opens, but with text emails about all you can do it track clicks. Take a look at Subscriber Tracker - it keeps counts for both clicks and opens for each subscriber, plus a whole lot more (URL in my profile).

[Steve_S]

Interesting

FREE + Contributions if you wish under GNU

http://mojo.skazat.com/index.html

Outstanding solution.