Summary: Tracking services exist which claim to be able to tell you whether or not someone has opened your email. They're only half right.
Has anyone tried www.---.com? It's a free email tracking service. How good and reliable is it? Is it safe to use?
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That's actually a comment that was posted to one of my articles on whether or not you could tell if email has been opened or read by the recipient.
The short answer is that there's really only one email tracking technique currently in use, and it only works maybe half the time. In other words, it's not all that helpful.
Let me explain how it works, and you'll see what I mean.
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When I mention email tracking, most folks think of the "Return Receipt" option that some mail programs display. The intent of that function was exactly what you might expect: an automated email back indicating that the email you sent had been opened.
It doesn't work.
The reason it doesn't work is simple: it requires the cooperation of the email program being used to read the email. Because of abuse by spammers and others, almost all email programs now either completely ignore Return Receipt requests or require that you enable the feature before Return Receipts are acted on. And no one turns it on.
With "Return Receipt" rendered pretty much useless, the technique used today is to include an image - often an invisible image - that is fetched from a web page when the email is displayed. Then, using the web server logs on which those images are hosted, the sender can see who's opened and displayed their email.
There are two very large problems with this technique:
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It works only with HTML or "Rich text" email.
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It works only if users have "display images" enabled.
That last point is particularly telling. Most email programs now default to not displaying images in email. The recipient has to enable it, often by adding the sender's email address to the list of "trusted" senders.
But if the image is not displayed, then the email cannot be tracked. It's just that simple.
Put another way:
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If your email is plain text, there's no way to automatically track whether it's been opened or read. Period.
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If your email is in HTML, then only those recipients who've enabled images can be tracked. The rest appear to have never opened your email, even though they may have.
There are many tracking services out there that gloss over this fact. They'll claim lots of success, but it all boils down to this: you cannot tell with any certainty that someone hasn't read your email. They may have opened it and read it without images turned on, defeating any tracking ability.
And even if you do get notification for those folks with images turned on, all that tells you is that the email was displayed - it does not tell you that the email was actually read.
The only truly accurate way to track whether your email is being read is simply to note whether the recipient acted on it by telling you, by replying, by clicking a link in the email or by doing something else that can only be attributed to having read that email.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - Can I tell if email I sent has been read by the recipient?
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Ask Leo! - How do I get a notification when anyone I send an email to forwards that email?
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Ask Leo! - Will Outlook's reading pane tell senders I've seen their mail?
Article C3165 - October 1, 2007
thank you very much i was wondering about you you didn't send me email yesterday
Posted by: Duex Tremps at October 12, 2007 12:52 PMIf you do not open an email that has a Return Receipt attached to it, but you forward it to another email address and then open it, does it still show as being opened?
Posted by: Kim at January 2, 2008 1:45 PMif a postemaster tells me that my e-mail did not get tru due to code 5.5.0 then i try again with no message. does this mean my e-mail got tru this time?
Posted by: sergio gioia at January 11, 2008 2:44 PMIs there a program that tracks chat rooms visited by entering a user name or email address?
Posted by: Rick at March 2, 2008 10:41 PMSir, i have lost my both hotmail account at once in the night as usual i checked mail and closed and next day morning when i check its say email or password invalid my both hotmail account say error message how do i find out what happened to my both Hotmail accounts?
Posted by: faizer at March 12, 2008 11:53 AMActually, this is all so refreshing!...so many thanks. I just used one of the internet email tracking services ( shall keep it anonymous)to track an impt. email of mine last weekend. I first rec'd a notice from this tracking service indicating my email was being read and further details to come forth...about three minutes later... I received another email from the tracking service: this time showing my email "read duration" time was: 00:00:01! Terrible! It crushed me! I have been devastated thinking my email wasn't read at all...I thought, maybe, it was immediately deleted when the person saw my name???! This email tracking agency promises to send updates everytime a tracked email is reread...mine was never reread had no updates ever!...never received any more about it then just those initial two emails announcing my email was first being opened with a N/A for the tracking time and second being read with a duration of one second flat! Thanks to this article here that these email tracking services online aren't that reliable! Now I can finally have some hope that the party I sent it to did read it, even though I was informed my email was only read for one second, this really warms my heart in this particular case...thanks much!
Posted by: Linda at May 7, 2008 7:12 PMI probably use the same tracking service as the above and I can say that just because it reads "duration" as a few seconds, if you look closely at the times the email was opened, you can sometimes see that it was actually up on the screen longer, therefore read longer. The service may just be tracking the initial "click" to open the email. Mine has worked pretty well, but not well enough.
Posted by: Ginger at September 3, 2008 7:02 PMThe Pointofmail.com service has seemed to be very faithful at returning information as to whether an email has been sent, recived, read, when, where, and how many times it was opened. This is very informative and it also tells you if it was forwarded and to whom. Wow....what do you think about this program????
Posted by: barb at October 8, 2008 7:56 AMhello..i've got pointofmail and guess what..i just got a very snooty email from someone saying they have found out i was spying by having a program that allows me to see when they opened their mail..now i've lost a friend...so actually how reliable is pointofmail...and how could a person find out that their email is tracked?? i know that once when i sent one to myself and then forwarded it, at the end of my name it said pointofmail??? of course i can't get ahold of anyone at pointofmail..
Posted by: angie at February 4, 2009 8:20 AMI think email tracking is well known technique now a days, even individuals have started making scripts that can track emails. I just found a similar website which does not belong to any professional organization http://www.epagecollection.com/ and also free.
07-Feb-2009