A question about emailing with php

[jeddiki]

Hi,
The emailing company Aweber.com among others knows which
emails that are sent are by their mail server have been opened
and which ones have not.

How do they do that ?

Is this something that I can do with php?

When I use php to send my emails, what do I need to
do in order to get the information about whether
the recipient has opened the email or not ?

Thanks.
_______________

[Dormilich]

that is called a read receipt or return receipt (see email tracking)

[jeddiki]

Thanks,
I read the link you gave me.

I know that a lot of people turn off images in emails, so that
would effect the image method of tracking.

Also I see there are a lot of problems with return receipt
as it is voluntary.

I sometimes get a request ... and I never click on "send it" .

So, does that mean that when aweber shows that you only
got a 20% opened rate, it could really be a lot higher, it is just that
people are not allowing images ?

I also heard that Google reads and caches images and serves the cached version to gmail clients

So if Google is doing this for their gmail clients, - all gmail mails would appear to get opened and read ( cos Google is triggering the image script) when really they might not be. So the real open rate gor gmail would be a lot lower.

???

[Dormilich]

So, does that mean that when aweber shows that you only
got a 20% opened rate, it could really be a lot higher, it is just that
people are not allowing images ?

that is highly possible. some people even go as far as only reading text mode emails.

on the other hand side, I have had return receipts, stating that an email had been deleted unread …

So if Google is doing this for their gmail clients, - all gmail mails would appear to get opened and read ( cos Google is triggering the image script) when really they might not be. So the real open rate gor gmail would be a lot lower.

can’t tell about that, but I would never trust google with my emails (because they store everything)

[jeddiki]

As far as I can see the only methods of checking on
opening/reading of sent emails are not reliable.

So the point is, if this is true then
there is not really a way of knowing if
your emails are being read, or any way of
getting good stats.

I guess that the big companies may have run
some tests and can tell that as a general rule
if they monitor that 20 % are opened then that
means that the real figure is going to be more
like 45% ( or 15% which ever way it works out)

Maybe I can google for these stats ?