Hi,
I’m wanting to check to see if newsletters are being read.
The method I have in mind is to use an image which has a source of a php script as opposed to a standard image path.
This path will contain the mail id and the recipient id.
Obviously when the email is opened, the image which is not attached will be called remotely, which would then fire the script to mark the email as read.
Is this legit? Could I get into trouble using this method?
Cheers.
Michael.
I don’t know about any legal issues, but your idea won’t be reliable. Most web browsers will block remote content by default so your image script won’t get called without additional action from the user.
Hi,
I understand that it’s not going to be 100% accurate.
Can you think of another method? Other than tracking the links?
Cheers,
Michael.
Hi Michael,
If you’ve ever received a newsletter from Sitepoint (who use Campaign Monitor for their newsletters), at the very bottom of the source code you’ll see a tracking image, it will look something like this:
<img src="https://createsend1.com/123/456/abcd/efgh/o.gif" width="1" height="1" border="0"/>
Tracking images are a pretty standard way to pick up if someone has opened your newsletter (with the downside that text-only versions are not tracked at all, and that if someone blocks images the open isn’t tracked either).
All of the processing is of course done on the server side. Whether you use an actual image or a server side script that generates one is probably moot, so long as you have a way of gathering the data.
Alternatively - if it is a feasible option, you could use a 3rd party mailing list manager like Campaign Monitor or [URL=“http://mailchimp.com/”]Mail Chimp to send the emails for you. Most will give you pretty good reporting and statistics options out of the box.
As for your question is it’s “legal” … well, it isn’t “illegal” 
However, you’d probably have to think of a way to use a hashed version of your recipient IDs rather than the actual ones. You wouldn’t want someone to see a “recipient id” and contrive some way to use this to get user information out of your system using this identifier. If instead you would use a hashed version of the ID that would only be useful for your tracking script for example then you’d be on the safer side of the fence 
I receive e-mail newsletters from an organisation which, presumably, uses a similar method. My e-mail client blocks images by default, and I seldom over-ride that - which is, of course, my choice. I was taken-aback to receive an e-mail from the organisation, saying (in slightly hechtoring tones) they had noticed that I don’t open their newsletters and did I still want to receive them? Far from encouraging me, that annoyed me greatly because (a) I do read them and (b) whether I do or not is my business, not theirs - same as if the newsletter were sent by post.
So be careful about the conclusions you draw from this method, unless you want to risk annoying your customers. Of course, I may just be more-than averagely grumpy.