Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Our external email service provider has informed us that they can't track opening or click through rates for our enews subscribers who receive their emails in text only.

It's not just your service provider. No one can track a true text message as it can not contain the required 1x1 pixel image that is used for tracking purposes.

We currently do not give subscribers the choice of which format to receive our e-news. The format is determined by the set up of their email system.

很可能你发送消息在μlti-part format. You're really sending both the text and the HTML in one message. If your reader has an HTML-capable email program, that is what they will see. If not, then they see the text version.

Does anyone know of how to track emails in text only?

You can not track the opens. You can, however, track the clicks.

We have collated a list of those subscribers who have not opened our emails in the past year, however we now realise that this list will include those who have opened the email in text only format.

Correct. However, this is probably fewer than 10% of all of your opens. In addition, you can further weed out the openers by flagging people who have clicked any link. If they clicked a link, they opened the message.

What do you intend to do with the non-openers? Remove them? Send them something special?

Any clues on how to identify which are true non-opens?

You probably can't track the opens with 100% accuracy because of the text message issue.

As for sending a text link to the HTML version, we generally don't recommend this. Depending on your solution, however, clicking that link will result in an "open" being detected, even if the message sent is text.

Our solution, for example, displays as the Web version the exact same HTML that would have been delivered to the recipient's inbox, including the unique tracking pixel and all uniquely coded tracking links. So, when someone clicks the link to the Web version and the HTML is displayed, the open is registered.

Of course, this does not fully solve the problem because the original text message did not register the "true" open. But it's close...

Hope this helps, even if only a little.

Paul

I tested clicking through a specific link from a text only email, however the click-through did not register. Similarly, when I clicked the 'view in a browser' link that we provide at the top of all emails it did not register. Sounds like I should address this with our provider.

Click-throughs on text messages are certainly trackable. You simply replace the real URL with the tracking URL which redirects to the real URL (just like with the HTML version).

With the non-openers/text-only openers I plan to send them an email asking them to update their details to confirm their subscription. For those who don't respond, I intend to remove them.

This is a business decision only you can take. I support your effort to pare the list, but what's driving the decision? Unless your list is huge and you can significantly decrease the cost of each send by paring it (and there's no revenue loss that would have covered that cost had you booked it), the only positive that I can see from doing this is that you're going to make your metrics look better. Unless the math dictates otherwise, I'd vote for leaving all the valid email addresses in there; the incremental cost of a send is cheap, and you might be leaving revenue on the table. I suppose you could test it by just flagging the addresses you intend to remove, not including them on a send or two, and seeing how the numbers play out.

Why do you not recommend linking to a html version? We put a link at the top of each email saying 'if this email does not display correctly click to view in a browser'. So whether they receive the text or html version, they can choose to view in a browser.

I was not clear here. Apologies. I do recommend that you include a link to the HTML version in both the text and the HTML version (so that if images are broken or the HTML mangled, the reader can still see a clean version).

What I am against is just pushing a text-only message with little more than a link to the full HTML version on the Web. I've seen some people do this in an effort to get past filters, etc., but more times than not, I suggest pushing the multi-part version and letting the chips fall where they may. You have to do some domain delivery review to see if your messages are generating opens and clicks and go from there.