Q: Does Databack have the ability to tell us how many subscribers actually open the HTML newsletter emails that we send?
The short answer is no, we don't provide any "built-in" function for tracking open rates. The main reason is that the underlying technique used to do this has significant limitations. However if you really want to do it, it's not that difficult.
Basically, the trick is that for every HTML newsletter you send, you must include at least one image (even a one-pixel gif will work) which is unique to that newsletter. Every time someone opens the newsletter, that image will be served by your web server. You simply look at your server logs, count how many times that image file was served, and that's how many times your newsletter was opened.
Or at least that's the theory. In practice there are many limitations:
- Your newsletter must be HTML.
- This technique is called a "web bug" or "web beacon" and accepted practice is that the use of them should be disclosed in your site's privacy policy.
- Several of the large web-email ISPs (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc.) now block images in emails by default. Unless the reader specifically enables images for your newsletter, that view won't get counted.
- More and more email users are learning the advantages of reading email as plain text, and they won't be counted. Subscribers who read their mail on Blackberry, cellphone or PDA usually fall into this category.
- Some ISPs cache images on their own proxy servers (aol, comcast, etc.) and so only the first reader gets counted. Subsequent views are served from that proxy cache and don't get recorded on your web server.
- Outlook and Outlook Express default to using a "preview pane" and most users don't bother or know how to disable that. So even if they simply highlight the newsletter to delete it, it opens in the preview pane and counts as a "view".
- "Opened" does not equal "read". There are many scenarios in which a subscriber might open the newsletter without actually reading most or even any of it.
- Finally, if you are sending mail on behalf of an organization, check your privacy policy. Many prohibit the use of web bugs in sent emails.
So the bottom line is that you *can* track "open rate" this way, but the actual number or percentage of opens can be very misleading. The best use for this statistic is the week-to-week variation, since the error rate will generally be pretty consistent and thus cancel out when comparing two or more weeks.
Q: What about tracking "click-thru rates"?
- We don't offer that as a service either. In order to do this, other services must modify every URL in your message as it is sent, so that the links all point to THEIR SERVER. When someone clicks a link, they are taken first to the provider's server so the click can be recorded, then redirected "instantly" to the original URL. Obviously, for this to work, the providers site must be up and running well or your subscribers will experience delays or even errors. This seems an unnecessary complication, when the data is often available in your own web server logs anyway.