Code to see if an email was opened

[kipper]

HI everyone,

 

I am sure this has got to be common question. Is there a way to tell if an email recipient opened an email I sent?

Here is the scenario. In an application where the application sends email campaigns.

 

So, if I send out an email to 100 people, I want to keep track of how many of them actually opened the email. 

 

I do not want to rely on  a reader clicking a link, or downloading image to determine if the "read" the email, as one can still read an email without doing those things. Is there a more reliable way?

 

Thanks Kipper

 

 

[micha8l]

Nope, the web's stateless. However you could assign each E-mail sent an ID and then have them click a link, with the email ID hardcoded into the query string, to your landing page where you could check for the email ID in a query string.

[Maq]

These are ways that you seem not to want, but maybe they will help:

 

1) Loading an image from an link in a HTML email.

2) Javascript trickery.

3) Have the user click a link.

 

The first two aren't so reliable.

[micha8l]

Maq's right, in theory you could do that, but don't be expecting your email to arrive in their inbox, more like their spam folder. Go with my method, if a user's interested in your E-mail they'll click the link.

[kipper]

Thank you everyone. So, the answer is no, there is not a way. As I mentioned, I know I put an image or a link, but that all requires a user to click on  something. I was hoping to call a header. At least I know the answer is no.

 

Thanks

[Anti-Moronic]

Would be cool if there was a callback header or something. Maybe some searching on google will produce some other ideas?

 

Really there is only a few ways - image, javascript, link. But the link will not be accurate and the other two are not reliable.

 

With the image, that doesn't require the user to click on anything. They just need to open the email. The problem is that some email clients will not display the image and/or send to spam folder. With this kind of tracking the image is created dynamically using php and during this process you log relevant data. You can also parse access logs to achieve this.