Need solution to send out html emails then track who reads them.

[marcus76]

hi all,

Can anyone suggest a good product? maybe integrates to the site php/mysql?

I need to manage lists of users, keep notes / comments, record dates etc - then send out a standard email and have the ability to track if and when they read this email.

Appreciate any advice on this - i'd prefer open source type thing.

Cheers

Marcus

[Tidal2]

Sorry Marcus but this would be a spammers delight to identify active email addresses. If there is a way of doing this I have no wish to see it put here.

[cgrantski]

It's much more legitimate if using an in-house, opt-in email list. In fact, it's standard practice for that. I guess you're saying that if anybody mentioned such a tool here, then real spammers here in www will grab it? In my experience, spammers don't seem to care whether an email address is current, so I'm not sure I agree.

[stajer]

It is actually not hard to do this, but the method is not very reliable.

You put a 1x1 pixel transparent image in each email where the image is generated by php script. So your email would include the following img call:

img src="http://www.example.com/tranparent.php?email=[e-mail]&emailid=98765"

transparent.php tracts the date/time that [e-mail] opened email 98765 and then pushes out the transparent 1x1 image.

The problem is that most email readers today do not display images by default so the call is never made to transparent.php.