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Track Read Messages / Bounced Emails
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:26 am
by decipher
Hi There
I was wondering if there is any easy and simple (or even not simple) way of tracking which messages were read.
I thought of using the famous <img src="logemail.php?id=5656"> method but most email clients block external images.
Is there some other way of tracking which messages were actually opened (without using read receipts)?
I was also wondering the easiest method for tracking bounced emails with invalid recipients. How do I create an account that stores the bounced emails, and then use php to access that account and the bounced emails?
Thank you for an excellent mailing script! And thank you for any suggestions given.
Peace
Rich
Re: Track Read Messages / Bounced Emails
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:07 am
by Chris Corbyn
decipher wrote:Hi There
I was wondering if there is any easy and simple (or even not simple) way of tracking which messages were read.
I thought of using the famous <img src="logemail.php?id=5656"> method but most email clients block external images.
Is there some other way of tracking which messages were actually opened (without using read receipts)?
I was also wondering the easiest method for tracking bounced emails with invalid recipients. How do I create an account that stores the bounced emails, and then use php to access that account and the bounced emails?
Thank you for an excellent mailing script! And thank you for any suggestions given.
Peace
Rich
I keep meaning to get around to writing a bounce-detection system (not in Swift... it's a totally different area) but it's not likely to happen in the next 6 months or so

I'm not aware of any other bounce-detection systems in PHP neither.
As for email tracking, apart from asking users to reply, the image trick is the best solution but I personally think it's a bit immoral to invade someone's privacy like that. My opinion isn't important though

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:03 pm
by decipher
As for email tracking, apart from asking users to reply, the image trick is the best solution but I personally think it's a bit immoral to invade someone's privacy like that. My opinion isn't important though Wink
On the contrary, I appreciate and value your opinion, very much so! After looking at it from a privacy angle, it makes sense, and i guess I agree with you, I haven't been able to find any other method other than the image method, which can't really be trusted, It's no so important, just thought it would be a cool feature.
With regards to tracking the bounced emails, php can definately do this. I remember seeing how it's done on some random blog and haven't seen it since

Hoped someone could point me in the right direction.. thanx for the reply d11wtq
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 5:07 pm
by Chris Corbyn
PHP can do the bounce-detection yes. You need to use the IMAP functions, unless you can go one step further and process in realtime as the mail hits the server (dedicated MX routers/system filters). Using the IMAP functions is the simplest solution though

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 8:43 am
by decipher
Thank you for suggestion. I have taken a look around and this class file seems to work perfectly:
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/file/9635.html
So what I did was create a new mail account on our server (
returned@ourserver.com), and set the return path as this email address for every mail sent out with SwiftMailer. I then use that class file to read the message headers of the messages that are found with that mail account, searching for "X-Failed-Recipients" within the message headers.. The rest is history, now I just need to find a method to identify which bounced emails belonged to which list or campaign..
Once again, thank you for your help chris.