email marketing, statistics collecting

Question

I see many statistics collection services for newsletters .. I'd like to understand how they works and how I could record the various events, such as opening the mail or click on the links.

email clients do not support javascript, right? how they do these things??

thank you very much!

Answer 1

1. Links are usually counted by formulating special link addresses. For example, if a link normally went to www.google.com, it will instead be http://www.mysite.com/trackedlink.aspx?emailaddress={trackinginfoforthisemail}&forwardto=www.google.com or something to that degree.

2. Opens usually are counted with either read receipts - not good, or using images with a tracking url, eg www.mysite.com/trackimage.aspx?emailaddress={trackingidforthisemailhere}&showimage=abc.gif - this method is surprisingly reliable.

3. Rejections / bouncebacks ect are done by setting flags and reply to email addresses on the emails so that when a server delivers or bounces a status email is returned to the server

The parts in the {} are whatever data you need to track the email against a particular recipient, perhaps by email address or primary key that represents the person being emailed.