If you are using Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Server, you can easily request read receipts and get notified when your email is opened by the recipient(s).
As such a tracking feature in not available in web email like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or the new Windows Live Hotmail, here’s an extremely effective and free solution that works with every email program.
The service is called SpyPig and it will instantly send you a notification when your email is read by the recipient. The read receipt will also have other details like the IP address of the recipient and the exactly number of times he or she read your email.
Using SpyPig is simple - type your email address (where you wish to receive the notification) and they’ll give you a small tracking graphic that you have to embed in your outgoing Gmail message via a simple drag-n-drop (just like the Gmail Smileys). That’s it.
Now if you are worried about sharing your email address , read our previous email read receipt hack that shows you how to construct your own SpyPig kind of solution using Google Analytics or Statcounter.
The SpyPig trick however works only with Rich Text or HTML email, not plain text.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/check-yahoo-gmail-email-read-receipts/2150/
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Reader Comments
This is why many people block images in HTML mail, be they local resources or externally referenced. There is a standard way to request a return receipt, by the way, as well as delivery receipts. Most email software supports doing things this way; Evolution and Thunderbird are two clients that I know support this. It also does not use any nasty tricks like this—spammers invented this trick and they will continue to use it indefinitely.
There is also DSN, which is a standard mechanism. It can be used with Gmail or Google Apps for your Domain simply by using a complying mail client. DSN is a hint to the SMTP servers along the way to let someone know when the message has successfully been delivered to a given person’s mailbox.
What happens in case we are using Outlook Express. Can we put the code in our emails sent through Outlook Express..
Written by Sandeep on 01.26.08
What about when using Gmail as the recipient? When it asks me if I want to display images, I usually tell it “no” unless whatever is missing is vitally important. If I say “no,” will the server even make a request for this image, and will this method be thwarted?
Written by Nathan on 06.19.08