[Mailman-Users] how to get "my letter is opened" information without Delivery or read receipts are being checked

[Richard Damon]

On 4/16/12 8:02 AM, Gulyás Krisztián wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to send html-formatted e-mails to my customers through mailman
> mailing list. I would like to know of each recepients whether they've read
> my letter or not. If I use Delivery or read receipts, the recepient can
> decide he / she sends me the receipts or not. But I need this information in
> all cases.
>
> Have you any ideas?
>
> I would use an image tag for it, with an online source. The source would be
> a php webpage and variables (letter id, recepient id) would be given to that
> page by the letter (or Outlook, etc.) For example: <img
> src='http://exapmle.com/?u=%userid%&l=%letterid%' alt="" width="1"
> height="1"> When a user opens my letter, the php page would receive these
> variables and it would store the "opened" information in a database by the
> letter and recepient id.
>
> I think this is a very good idea, but a very important thing is still
> needed: if I send an e-mail to my mailing list with a user and letter id,
> everyone in my mailing list would receive his / her mail with the same ids.
> So this solution isn't a per user solution (I only know that my letter was
> opened at least once).
>
> Is there any solution to change the %userid% string to the recepient's
> e-mail address for each recepient's mail by mailman?
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> Chris
>
You will need to enable personalization for the list, which allows for
each person to get their own personal copy of the message with some
customizations allowed.

This may still not be enough, as what you are trying to do is exactly
what some spam tries to do to verify email addresses, and many email
programs will, at least by default, block this. Unless you have some
"authority" over your recipients so that you can impose a penalty on
them for not letting you know that they got the message, it will always
be unreliable, and there will always be a significant number of people
who have read the message without letting you know of it (unless you put
the message in the image, or on a link, so the have to go to the net to
see it).

-- 
Richard Damon