Sort of OT - Tracking clicked links in an email?

[Mr B]

Howdy,

We are working on setting up an HTML based newsletter for the members of our association. I may use
FP to design the look of the email since that's what we use to do the website.

Is there any way to link up FP with some way of sending the email out to the information in our
database? And if so, is there any way of having it embed anything so we can tell when someone opens
the email and when they click on various links and such?

Or if anyone knows of any other pgoram to use that can do this, that'd be great.

Thanks!

 

[Steve Easton]

To send it you will need a third party application.
One you might try is Listmaster pro from AnalogX
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/lmpro.htm

As for the second part about tracking links, <imho> that is the fastest way
I can think of to put yourself right out of business. Links in an email
that attempt to "Phone Home" when clicked are going to have firewall alerts
popping up like crazy.
</imho>

--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
...............................with a computer

 

[chris leeds]

there's a thing called cooler email (you'll have to google it) and if I
remember right it'll track the views and links followed and so on.
I believe it's got the benefit of being distributed from their server rather
than yours.

 

[johnny]

I really don't know what you mean here. You said, "Links in an email
that attempt to "Phone Home" when clicked are going to have firewall alerts
popping up like crazy."

Our company is thinking of using bCentral's List Builder to send out a
newsletter. We are not spammers. We (I) liked it because it is an opt-in and
very easy opt-out mailer. It also (I think) gives us the ability to see, via
a report back to us, who received the newsletter and who also actually
clicked on any link. We don't want to cause any trouble for our customers.
Will it, or any newsletter that does reporting of any kind, cause firewall
alerts to go off? By just happening to see your reply you may have saved me
a lot of grief!

 

[chris leeds]

it would depend entirely on the firewall, adaware, and anything else the
recipient has on their computer.

 

[chris leeds]

and it'd depend on how the email was "phoning home".

 

[johnny]

That makes me feel better. Do you know if bCentral's List Builder would
cause any problems?

 

[Steve Easton]

The "opt in" bulk email news letter part is fine.
The read receipt part for the email is also fine. ( although I turn the
feature off in my machines )

If the newsletter is server based and going to be viewed on your server by
the visitor opening a link to a web page, then there is no problem with
tracking clicked links.


However, if you mean tracking links in an email that is opened in a client
machine, the only way to get a report of which link is clicked in an email
is for the client machine to send a report back to your server in some shape
or form. Since this report will have to be generated in and sent from the
machine that is viewing the email, it will almost certainly give a firewall
alert that Outlook Express is trying to connect to the internet. This will
most likely get the privacy advocates and the spyware people up in arms, not
to mention "alienate" the person reading the email

Tracking links in an email viewed in a client machine is how I understood
your original post, hence my initial response

--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
...............................with a computer

 

[chris leeds]

I would have to assume that with the amount of money and talent they have
available to them that it would not.

 

[johnny]

Steve, this is all pretty confusing to me. As I said, we're not spammers.
bCentral's List Builder (as I understand it) will allow us to send out email
newsletters to customers that sign up at our site. Once they receive an
email they can unsubscribe with one click and that's the end of them
receiving any newsletters from us. That's what we want.

However, the idea of being able to track which visitors actually opened the
email and then clicked on any links is valuable information to us. We don't
want (or need) any information about WHO actually opened the email or
clicked on a link. What we want are the aggreate numbers so we can see if an
idea (promotion) is working, and which one works best. Is this considered
unethical? Is there a better way? Thanks.

 

[Steve Easton]

Johnny,

How I would do it to ensure no one becomes offended is this way.

Create the news letter as a web page within your web on your server. Use a
"link counter" which is called a "Redirect Counter" in the links to count
the number of times each link in the news letter is clicked. There is a
free redirect counter you can download from AnalogX here:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/cgirdir.htm
I'm sure there are many others


Create the email that mentions the "new newsletter" is available, and have a
link in the email that they can click to open the newsletter. Also send the
email "read receipt" so you get an email response when it is opened. This
will also tell you *who* opened it. ( however, the read receipt feature can
be denied by the person receiving the email )

As I said, this is just *my* recommendation.

hth

--
Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
95isalive
This site is best viewed..................
...............................with a computer

 

[johnny]

Thanks Steve,

That sounds better than what we were going to do. I can see that I have work
in front of me though.