[thelist] HTML e-mail tracking

[Aaron Johnson]

On Fri, 2002-02-08 at 17:19, BT Bigpant wrote:
> > HTML e-Mail is one thing. HTML e-Mail that assumes the user is on-line at
> the
> > time they are reading the message is just plain dumb
>
> A hearty slap on the back... what people like is to be dealt a straight
> deal. If they think they are being manipulated, tricked, coersed or
> whatever, they will feel resentment towards you. It will reflect *very*
> badly indeed on your company.
I don't think this is true.  BT, I'm with you that we as web developers
think it sucks that some advertiser is trying to trick us, but the
general population has no clue that an image in an email is a tracking
device.  I get emails all the time larger companies... Jcrew, FAO
Schwartz, Kmart, whoever... they *ALL* put image trackers in their email
and no one is downgrading their stock because of it.


> Tell people what you are doing and why, and give them an opt-out. Have a
> link on the email that says 'We respect you and value your opinions - if you
> read this email and liked it, click here. We only want to know how many
> people are interested, we won't sell your details to the highest
> bidder....blah blah' - a bit twee, but you get the idea.
-- The *view* of the email is less important than the tracking of views
to purchases or views (email) to views (site) correlation that you can
do using an embedded image.  From a pure business standpoint, it's
actually a very useful tool IMHO.

FYI there are entire corporations that do ONLY this.. their sole purpose
is to send out targeted HTML emails to track people...

AJ