Email tracking

One of the most boring pastimes is waiting. Actually it is really boring if you don't know what you are waiting for. Sending an email message you don't have a clue what happens to it before and after it comes into "Inbox" of your recipient. And it would be so nice to know what occurs with the message. The solution is to use email tracking software.

Email tracking is a technique of monitoring email delivery to your intended recipient. This method is widely used in email marketing to find out the exact time and date when your message was received or opened. Such information as user IP address can also be collected through tracking technology. To use email tracker is quite easy and you don't have to install any spyware or anything else onto you subscribers' computers. Though data provided by email trackers cannot be considered an absolutely accurate one. The information sender typically wants to know is whether recipient actually received the email or clicked the links. Here are some advantages that the use of email trackers presupposes:

• You know the exact date (up to exact time) the user used to open your message
• You know the amount of times use opened an email and how much time he/she had spent reading it
• You can find out where the subscriber is from, because tool can show you an exact location on the map
• You can easily find out the recipients IP address
• You can see how many times the message was forwarded (if it was), and opened on different from user's computer
• You can identify whether the link included in your email was clicked or not, etc.

Some email clients include email tracking option in their software (i.g. Microsoft Office Outlook). To get the report the sender has to select the receipt request option prior to sending the message. But the fact you requested a receipt doesn't necessary mean you get one. The situation is that you kind of force the recipient to send you the notification. That's why a lot of users find it inconvenient and annoying.

Email marketing software sometimes includes tracking option as an advantage. The main tool it uses to track messages is cookies and web beacons (invisible tracking images that email marketing system insert into the message). Depending of the action the recipient performs the tracking code is activated. Email tracking software accumulates the information and reports metrics such as open-rates and click-through rates.

Email tracking can confirm that recipients actually read the messages, that email addresses are valid, sometimes it even can notify if the message was forwarded to a friend. Thus email tracking software became popular tool among email marketers, spammers and phishers. Due to data email tracking can provide some companies use it to determine how effective their sales and messages are. Others try to better understand their customers' and subscribers' interests and needs. Legal use of email tracking provides useful information and both parts (the companies and the subscribers) derive benefit of this. When used maliciously, it can be used to collect private data about businesses and individuals and to create more efficient phishing schemes. If you are using e-mail tracking or e-mail marketing software, your company's privacy policy should state that you may utilize tracking devices such as cookies and web beacons.

One more area the email tracking software can be used is to discover the identity of spammers. Due to most of them use Yahoo or Hotmail it is quite easy to find out who are they. Such information can be very helpful if somebody tries to phishing in the name of legal company.

Thereby email tracking software considered to be useful one. It of course won't make people respond to you any quicker, but you always will know that subscriber has at least read your message. Moreover it is quite convenient way of collecting needed metrics.