Anyone used email receipt/tracking programs? (server, work, click, default)

[didee]

I heard yesterday that you can track internet email receipt via some programs available online. One of them is called ReadNotify.

Has anyone used this or any other program that lets you know whether someone has 1) received, and 2) read an email you have sent?

I looked at ReadNotify's site but wonder if it's a gimmick.

TIA!

[swagger]

Don't know what specific technology they're using, but I'm very familiar with the SMTP protocol, and I know a thing or two about the tricks these types of companies use.

Nothing is foolproof. As far as the SMTP transaction goes, there's no way to guarantee accuracy about whether or not a message made it to a user's mailbox. The best anybody can do in that regard is say whether or not the message was accepted by the receiving server. About a million things can happen to the message after that which will cause it to never show up in a user's inbox.

What these companies usually do is embed images into your messages that are called from their servers using a unique URL. Most mail clients these days block external images by default, so that technique is becoming less effective over time.

There are a couple of headers you can set in your mail client that are supposed to do what you're looking for.

One is a delivery notification flag. Virtually every mail server out there strips this header out these days. I haven't received a delivery notification for a message I've set that flag on in years.

The other is the return receipt flag. What usually happens when you set that is when the recipient opens the message, their client pops up a dialog box asking if they want to send the receipt. Most people click no... But you can try it. Depending on the sender and the context of the message, I sometimes return those (typically if the message is from a customer).

You can try the commercial services, but I don't know how effective they're going to be, and their effectiveness is going to go down over time.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by didee

I looked at ReadNotify's site but wonder if it's a gimmick.

TIA!

Guess that depends on you definition of gimmick, such a system would rely on HTML and external files being enabled in a users email client. The email would contain something like this in the HTML:

<img src="http://trackingcompany.com/uniqueidforemail.gif">

When the user opens the email if they have HTML and external images enabled the tracking company can verify the email was opened because uniqueidforeveryremail.gif is requested from their server. uniqueidforeveryremail.gif is just going to be small 1 pixel transparent image you would never see.

It will work but most email clients have external files turned off by default, you couldn't rely on this as tool to absolutely determine if it was read.