Read Receipts and Email Tracking

Email Read Receipts and Email tracking let you know if an important email has been read.

They are however used for different purposes and work differently.

Email read receipts are feature of the messaging system and need to be requested by the message sender and confirmed by the message recipient.

They are used to verify if an important message has been read.

If you do not receive a read receipt then you then need to contact the recipient using another method.

Whether or not a read receipt is returned or not is completely at the recipient's control, the sender has no ability to force a read receipt.

 It also important to bear in mind  that not all email clients are capable of generating read receipts, and they are usually not available for web based email clients like Hotmail and Yahoo email.

If you are using outlook Express then see

Enabling read receipts in outlook Express

If you need to know that a message has been received  then you can configure Outlook Express to request notification. This can be configured for individual messages or for all messages.

To request a receipt for individual messages

In the new message window:
1.Tools menu
2.click Request Read Receipt


To request a receipt for all messages

  1. Tools menu
  2. Click options
  3. Click the Receipts tab
  4.  Select Request Read Receipt



    Whether or not you receive a notification depends on the the settings and actions of the message recipient. Message recipients can choose not to send read receipts, even when they are requested.
 

Email Tracking Software

Many organizations use mailing lists to contact their customers. Because of the problem with spam many organizations employ spam blocking or filtering systems. These spam filters can block wanted as well as unwanted email.

By using email tracking software you can be alerted to these types of problems.

Most email tracking systems use html code (tracking software) embedded in the email message itself.

When the recipient opens the message the html code attempts to contact a web server (usually to load a small image).

 If the contact with the web server is successful then it is recorded by the web site as having been read.

Using this technique it is possible not only to know if the message has been read but how many times and even to know if the message has been forwarded.

Email tracking software is not however 100% accurate as it usually relies on the recipients email client support for HTML email -majority of email clients but not all.