Show HN: Email open rates are stupid. • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#11

Post by staunch » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:46 AM UTC

barumrho wrote: post #2

How do they determine engagement time or whether the email was deleted?

1. In the HTML email put

2. Serve up http://myserver/invisible.gif with a process that trickles down an endless GIF image a few bytes at a time.

3. When the connection to the endless GIF dies, call that the "reading" time.

4. If a "reading" time is under some threshold call it "deleted".

That's how I did it a few years ago anyway.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#12

Post by aarlo » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:46 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #9

Lies. There's no way to determine if an email got deleted (unless you somehow buy data from GMail, hotmail, yahoo mail, etc).

Lie. If it was read for only a couple seconds, it's effectively a delete.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#13

Post by rorrr » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:47 AM UTC

aarlo wrote: post #12

rorrr wrote: post #9

Lies. There's no way to determine if an email got deleted (unless you somehow buy data from GMail, hotmail, yahoo mail, etc).

Lie. If it was read for only a couple seconds, it's effectively a delete.

Bullshit.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#14

Post by barumrho » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:48 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #6

barumrho wrote: post #2

How do they determine engagement time or whether the email was deleted?

I have no idea (didn't find out from a quick browse through the site), but the first thing that came to mind was an image in the mail, pointing to a server that slowly trickles a response without ever finishing so it can measure how long the other end is listening.

I guess that could work if mail clients don't have timeouts for images.

I still can't imagine how they would detect deletion though.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#15

Post by FaceKicker » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:48 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #7

aarlo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a special tracking code that figures it out over the email clients' use of HTTP and with some fancy server-side node/mongodb stuff.

Bullshit. There's not a single major client that executes code from emails. You might be able to have some link back to your server, but even those are blocked by default.

Are images blocked on hotmail, yahoo, etc. too now? I've only used gmail for the past 5+ years.

Either way though, it wouldn't really produce a random sample, though maybe it would allow somewhat meaningful comparisons between separate email campaigns even if the absolute numbers aren't too meaningful.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#16

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:48 AM UTC

This is why I block graphics, run mail in a separate browser instance etc. GTFO of my business.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#17

Post by rorrr » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:50 AM UTC

FaceKicker wrote: post #15

rorrr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. There's not a single major client that executes code from emails. You might be able to have some link back to your server, but even those are blocked by default.

Are images blocked on hotmail, yahoo, etc. too now? I've only used gmail for the past 5+ years. Either way though, it wouldn't really produce a random sample, though maybe it would allow somewhat meaningful comparisons between separate email campaigns even if the absolute numbers aren't too meaningful.

Yeah, all of them block images for emails that come from new contacts.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#18

Post by OJKoukaz » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:52 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #7

aarlo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a special tracking code that figures it out over the email clients' use of HTTP and with some fancy server-side node/mongodb stuff.

Bullshit. There's not a single major client that executes code from emails. You might be able to have some link back to your server, but even those are blocked by default.

They aren't blocked by default in all clients. Check your mom's iPhone, it loads images by default.

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#19

Post by dangrossman » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:53 AM UTC

barumrho wrote: post #14

dangrossman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea (didn't find out from a quick browse through the site), but the first thing that came to mind was an image in the mail, pointing to a server that slowly trickles a response without ever finishing so it can measure how long the other end is listening.

I guess that could work if mail clients don't have timeouts for images. I still can't imagine how they would detect deletion though.

They're just calling "viewed for <x seconds" a deletion, it seems...

Re: Show HN: Email open rates are stupid.

#20

Post by 2mur » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 3:59 AM UTC

aarlo wrote: post #5

barumrho wrote: post #2

How do they determine engagement time or whether the email was deleted?

We have a special tracking code that figures it out over the email clients' use of HTTP and with some fancy server-side node/mongodb stuff.

Maybe a throttled node.js response on an img on a large image file? edit: Oops I see that staunch beat me to it.