Alternative to 0px images (aka web beacons)

Question

Hi all

Our marketing department sends out a newsletter to 'opt-in' customers and would like to track how many of these emails were opened. This is NOT a spamming exercise - these clients can unsubscribe at any time and they opt-in to begin with.

The problem is that many (most?) web and desktop email clients do not show images by default. This means that we can't tell if a user has opened an email as the 0px image does not fire. Of course if they allow images for our domain it will fire just fine. Here is some example code:

<img src ="http://www.mydomain.com/?someInfo=x&amp;otherInfo=y" width="1" height="1" />

Does anyone know if there is any alternative to this method of tracking emails that are opened etc?

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Please, just don't do this sort of stuff.

It's this kind of pissing into the pool which has made email and all things Internet so unnecessarily difficult nowadays.

If you want to know if emails are opened, add the appropriate disposition notification headers ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5337 ). If that doesn't work, then just accept that your customers' right to control their own computers ranks above your marketing department's need to collect statistics.

Answer 2

I don't think there is a right way to do this without compromising the customer privacy or email security. HTML email is one of the ugliest and most insecure piece of technology ever created. Convince your people to stop using such a thing.

Answer 3

Notification headers is the only other way that I know of.

Answer 4

This means that we can't tell if a user has opened an email

Welcome to the wonderful world of e-mail!

Category NOTABUG, marking WONTFIX

(There have been ways to fool certain mailers into making external requests through eg. stylesheets in the past, but these are highly software-specific and usually fixed when found. You won't find any reliable solution, by design.)

PS.

src="http://www.mydomain.com/?someInfo=x&otherInfo=y"

&

Answer 5

Provide a link interesting enough to click, going to a place specific to your e-mail.
Con: Not all users reading the e-mail will click on it.
Pro: That's better than nothing?

Answer 6

My advice is to make it worth their effort. Place a link in the email and let them know that if they click on it or respond in some way (that allows you to know they've opened the email), they'll get some reward.

Then reward them. Market research companies actually pay people for their time, why should you be any different? This is, after all, a service they're providing for you, not a basic right of yours.