Email Marketing - A Little Overwhelmed - Page 2 - Irish SEO, Marketing & Webmaster Discussion

Frodo · #11 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 01:16 AM

you can track open rates for anyone who has images on fairly easy with something like

PHP Code:

  $email = "user@domain.com";

echo "<img src='http://www.yourdomain.com/trackingimage.php?email=".$email."' />";

Then in trackingimage.php you have a simple script that records the email, time, ip whatever you want/can get really and outputs your image.

Not sure how they track people who don't download images

Forbairt · #12 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 07:53 AM

probably with images loaded from a server ? (which I always disable) or does it have a "responder has requested notification" feature which I always disable anyways.

blacknight · #13 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:08 AM

The problem with most of those open rate tracking things is that they use a web bug which most corporate email filters will block ...

Forbairt · #14 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:18 AM

I don't open emails as html ... so I guess you want to have your email as plain text as well (should have mentioned that originally)

And yeah gmail blocks the images .. though that said ... they generate a thumbnail of the images which can seem a bit strange (I'll assume they are attached images though)

gav240z · #15 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frodo

Thats something I would never have considered, what does the CSS for that look like?

img.class:alt{} no?

Is it widely supported? ie6, ff, outlook?

Think less elegant. I used a simple element like so.
<img src="http://www.etc...">

Unfortunately when it comes to email marketing you can't rely on CSS much at all. Basically you need to style using all the old HTML standards.

gav240z · #16 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbairt

I don't open emails as html ... so I guess you want to have your email as plain text as well (should have mentioned that originally)

And yeah gmail blocks the images .. though that said ... they generate a thumbnail of the images which can seem a bit strange (I'll assume they are attached images though)

Yeah I thought about that, In all honesty I prefer plain text emails too. I did mention this, but marketing wants images in the email (*Sigh*).

gav240z · #17 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blacknight

The problem with most of those open rate tracking things is that they use a web bug which most corporate email filters will block ...

Yes especially if you use a 1x1 pixel gif image. I suppose open rates should be taken with a grain of salt and really should only be used to measure improvement and not actual real world data.

gav240z · #18 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sullyman1

I have used Sendstudio for newsletters in the past.

It can tell you the following and more:

how many people opened the email
how many emails bounced
how many people clicked on whatever link is contained on your newsletter to reach your website
how many people unsubscribed from the newsletter

Pretty cool software

I was looking at software called Mail Chimp, In fact most of what I learnt about email marketing was on their website. I'd use the service myself if it was in the budget, but for now the boss hasn't approved using a 3rd party service.

Forbairt · #19 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gav240z

Yeah I thought about that, In all honesty I prefer plain text emails too. I did mention this, but marketing wants images in the email (*Sigh*).

Images give more consistant output unfortunately ... but break a lot of rules

Forbairt · #20 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gav240z

Think less elegant. I used a simple element like so.
<img src="http://www.etc...">

Unfortunately when it comes to email marketing you can't rely on CSS much at all. Basically you need to style using all the old HTML standards.

I've never actually tried to format the alt for an image using CSS ... I take it its possible so ?

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