Email tracking

I have a personal project recently, to track who actually read my emails sent using Google Gmail. As we know it’s possible to specify for email read or delivery status when using traditional ‘fat’ email client e.g. Thunderbird and Outlook. Gmail does not have this feature.

I set a few objectives to my project:

1. It must be ‘silent’ and not notify my readers that they are being tracked.

2. It should be easy to use (else I would have a hard time sending each email).

3. There should be a dashboard to report analytics of time read, IP address (assuming geo-location) and other useful information.

This is what I did. I setup PIWIK website analytic solution on my own hosted server. Next, I create a ‘virtual’ website to run the tracker (similar to Google Analytics tracking code), followed by a Goal for an email campaign.

This is from PIWIK:

“Image Tracker tag
The Simple Image Tracker tag can be used when Javascript is disallowed.
Some websites like MySpace or eBay will not allow users to add Javascript to their profile but accept HTML. In this case, you can still track visits with Piwik using the simple Image Tracker.
Note: the code doesn’t use Javascript so Piwik will not be able to track some user information such as search keywords, referer websites, screen resolutions, plugin support and page titles.

The following parameters can also be passed to the image URL:
action_name – Defines the custom Page Title for this page view
idgoal – The request will trigger the given Goal
revenue – Used with idgoal, defines the custom revenue for this conversion”

With the above information, I created my URL to be “…/piwik.php?idsite=1&rec=1&idgoal=1&revenue=1&action_name=EmailLoaded” for example. Now I just go off to my Gmail, compose and specify who to send to. Before I click send, I will find a suitable spot and insert an image.

Google allows you to insert a URL as image source. I insert the entire HTML img src code (with my specially crafted URL) into the box and then ‘attach’ the invisible image. Finally send the email.

Anyone who view the email will load the image (remember it’s invisible) from their web browser / rich email client. Each load will provide minimal information to my PIWIK dashboard e.g. IP address whom my readers are from, date and time read etc.

Unless your reader does not enable image load (like myself) or is using a text mode only email client, this method should capture basic trend of email campaigns of any purpose. If you know of any other interesting ways to track email, do contact me.