Topic: Trace Emails to know reads status

[jojodid]

HI!
I want to track my mails to know reads or delevery status when recipents opens them; even if they decide not to send the acknowledgment of receipt. Is there any template or any contrib to implement that.
Some think like streak for gmail, but directly on the sme-server.

[Stefano]

I never heard about such a feature and sincerely I won't like it..

I don't think there's anything you can do on SME but subscribe an account on sendgrid or similar services

[Jean-Philippe Pialasse]

there is only to things I can see :

- check the qmail log, this will assure you their provider acknowledge the email. So you could assume they were delivered to the mailbox. Then it can still be in the spams, or they could simply discard it without opening it.

- use similar procedure as mailing list or advertisement mails : include remote image and other html code that will hit a server with a unique code making sure the email has been open. Still you can just assume they have read it. Unless you are behind them with a gun you can not force them to read it out loud, and even there reading it does not mean trying to understand it Unfortunatly for this second solution most of modern mail client will not allow any email to contact a remote server on loading unless you authorize them, to protect privacy... so back  to square one.

[brianr]

If these emails are builk emails of the marketing  / sales kind, then use iContact or MailChimp and you'll get all the stats that can be extracted from the process.

[mmccarn]

SMTP by itself includes no way to confirm that a recipient has opened an email message - all your server "knows" is what server it handed the email to.

Marketing software (iContact, Mailchimp) tracks email opens by embedding images, javascirpt, or fonts into the email that are downloaded from a server under their control by the recipient when they view the message. The embedded item is specific to each message and recipient, so the service knows who has accessed the embedded tracking information. Likewise, all links in the email are coded specifically for a single message & recipient so that the service "knows" if a recipient clicks on any link in a specific email.


If the recipient's email client does not download the tracking items, and the recipient doesn't click on anything, then you still don't know if they opened the email...

Another approach is to send an email that contains only a link to the actual message, which is stored on a server you control so you know when they click on the link to view the message.  Or create a "secure email" account for the recipient on your server that must be used to read the email, then send only a notification to the recipient ("You have received a secure message.  Please login at xxxxx to read it")

"FreeCodeCamp" released an open source email marketing delivery product a couple weeks ago: https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good