E-mail newsletter - check if newsletter is read

Hi,

I've been sending e-mail newsletters for a while to about 230 customers that
have been subscribed. Some of the customers are employees of big firms or
universities. I read the logs from our e-mail server and everything has been
sent correctly. Now I've heard from some customers that they did not receive
the newsletter at all. It's a HTML newsletter. Now I want to check what
customers have read the newsletter and what customers didn't. Is it possible
with something in the HTML code from the newsletter to collect the e-mail
adresses from the people who read it?
I tried using an img tag and instead of calling to an image I call an asp
page:

http://www.biognost.be/admin/researc...tomerEmailhere

The asp page stores the customer email in a database, but it doesn't work.
SSI is not an issue too because we are working on the client side here. Any
suggestions how I can call to a page in this HTML newsletter without messing
up the design (and maybe without the customer notifying it)?

Thanks,
Steven

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 14:38:01 +0200 Steven Platteeuw scrawled this
disquisition:

Now I've heard from some customers
that they did not receive the newsletter at all.

Stopped by a spam filter??

Now I want to check what customers have read the newsletter and what
customers didn't. Is it possible with something in the HTML code from
the newsletter to collect the e-mail adresses from the people who read
it?

No

The best you can do is embed an image file and check your server logs for
what IP addresses accessed the file. If you send only one letter to
podunk.edu or bigbuyer.com then you can do a reverse lookup on the IP
number and know that somebody at that location opened the file.

Unless you know the IP address of your customers there's no way to
identify them as individuals. You'll onle get accurate
individual results if you're mailing on a LAN where you know their
assigned IP.

FS

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 03:50:00 +0000 Friendly scrawled this disquisition:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 14:38:01 +0200 Steven Platteeuw scrawled this
disquisition:

Now I've heard from some customers
that they did not receive the newsletter at all.

Stopped by a spam filter??

Now I want to check what customers have read the newsletter and what
customers didn't. Is it possible with something in the HTML code from
the newsletter to collect the e-mail adresses from the people who read
it?

No

The best you can do is embed an image file and check your server logs for
what IP addresses accessed the file. If you send only one letter to
podunk.edu or bigbuyer.com then you can do a reverse lookup on the IP
number and know that somebody at that location opened the file.

Unless you know the IP address of your customers there's no way to
identify them as individuals. You'll onle get accurate individual results
if you're mailing on a LAN where you know their assigned IP.

After writing this last night I opened and read the source code for a
piece of spam mail. This code was at the bottom of the page:

<IMG height=1 src="http://db2.net-filter.com/db.php?site_id=16825&pa
ge=http%3A//www.selectmail.org/members/addcampaign.asp&referrer=&resol
ution=1024x768&time=17:44:44" width=1>

Apparently it is used by a contract mailer to verify to his customer how
many pieces of the mailing were actually opened by the recipients.

Presuming that you put a unique id into the code for each customer to
whom you sent the mail the server script could extract the information
and tell you which folks actually opened the mail.

"Where there's a will there's a way."

FS

"Friendly" <stranger (AT) your (DOT) door> schreef in bericht
newsan.2003.09.14.20.25.43.830035 (AT) your (DOT) door...

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 03:50:00 +0000 Friendly scrawled this disquisition:

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 14:38:01 +0200 Steven Platteeuw scrawled this
disquisition:

Now I've heard from some customers
that they did not receive the newsletter at all.

Stopped by a spam filter??

Now I want to check what customers have read the newsletter and what
customers didn't. Is it possible with something in the HTML code from
the newsletter to collect the e-mail adresses from the people who read
it?

No

The best you can do is embed an image file and check your server logs
for
what IP addresses accessed the file. If you send only one letter to
podunk.edu or bigbuyer.com then you can do a reverse lookup on the IP
number and know that somebody at that location opened the file.

Unless you know the IP address of your customers there's no way to
identify them as individuals. You'll onle get accurate individual
results
if you're mailing on a LAN where you know their assigned IP.


After writing this last night I opened and read the source code for a
piece of spam mail. This code was at the bottom of the page:

IMG height=1 src="http://db2.net-filter.com/db.php?site_id=16825&pa
ge=http%3A//www.selectmail.org/members/addcampaign.asp&referrer=&resol
ution=1024x768&time=17:44:44" width=1

Apparently it is used by a contract mailer to verify to his customer how
many pieces of the mailing were actually opened by the recipients.

Presuming that you put a unique id into the code for each customer to
whom you sent the mail the server script could extract the information
and tell you which folks actually opened the mail.

"Where there's a will there's a way."

FS

Thank you for helping me out here. I tried embedding an e-mail address in

the img src code and now I can see what e-mail address opens the newsletter.

Thanks,
Steven