Re: Opt-in Emails Opened & CTR

From: Michael Martinez <Michael_at_xenite.org>
Date: Wed 15 Nov 2000 10:18:31 -0500

MICHAEL MARTINEZ <Michael_at_xenite.org> WROTE:
> I don't see how the software can be determining who
> opened the email, unless you're including attachments
> or some sort of java applets that may be triggering
> filters.

TO WHICH JIM REARDON <jim_at_amusive.com> REPLIED:
> A popular way to track is through what was coined a
> "web bug" -- a 1x1 transparent pixel that loads from
> something like this:
>
> http://www.trackmyemailads.com/tracking.cgi?readby=your@email.com
>
> Where each user's email is put at the end of that URL.
> By loading that image, it tells the server the email
> address opened (not that they READ, but OPENED) that
> email.
>
> Of course, this only works with HTML emails.

And those can be ignored if people turn off HTML
activity in their email clients, can they not? Yet,
even so, at best such a system can be counted upon to
report a percentage of actual openings. The
percentage, I think, should be fairly unpredictable.
At least, different target audiences may not
necessarily have the same distributions of software and
settings.

I believe email clients would have to be designed to
EXPLICITLY provide marketing data without user
interaction. Eudora is not quite experimenting with
this for their own sake with an annoying opt-in survey
that pops up every now and then (even in the paid
product, which I currently use). All you have to do
is click on an approval button and the client will
happily email a record of your activity to Eudora. A
more effective tool would be a stealth emailer
(presumably one in which the user could turn the
feature on or off) that doesn't bug the user with
activity windows.

But to get such email clients into widespread use and
to sidestep the obvious (and not-so-obvious) privacy
issues would be a tremendous struggle. Perhaps only
Microsoft could pull off something like that. And
would people sit still for it?

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Received on Wed Nov 15 2000 - 09:18:31 CST