A Big “Yes” To Yesware: Insanely Easy Email Tracking

Evolving SEO Blog ^ | April 20, 2013 | Dan Shure

[2ndDivisionVet]

In short: I can’t believe this tool is free.

I mean, there are paid versions – but I can’t believe the free version is free. And even though 90% of my time spent doing SEO is not on link building, I am what you’d call a “heavy user” of email. I know a promising tool when I see it.

Meet Yesware of Boston, MA (Hola, neighbor)

I serendipitously stumbled upon Yesware from this website when I was looking up marketing / media agencies near me in Woostah.

Yesware does a few things; ◦Tracks emails – you can see when someone has read your email, and more (please read their FAQ for info on any limitations) ◦Custom email templates ◦CRM Sync – connect email right to your CRM ◦Analytics – see your email analytics right in Gmail

It’s designed and marketed for Sales. But, “Hello” link builders… meet your new best friend.

The essence of what I’ll be reviewing today, is their free Gmail Plugin for email tracking – although they do have a variety of pricing options and levels. (FYI – Yesware did not ask me to write this review.)

1. The Tour

Sooo easy. This is one of the biggest selling points. The interface is incredibly easy to use, right from within Gmail;

The Inbox

The Compose Window

Here’s what the compose window now looks like – I was testing it out on Ross;(continued)

[fieldmarshaldj]

[PLMerite]

Bump for fireworks.

[onona]

Pass the popcorn please ?

[fieldmarshaldj]

"In short: I can’t believe this tool is free."

Unlike this tool, which has cost us $10 trillion.

[Gaffer]

Very apropos and quick wit....kudos!

[raybbr]

tech ping

[Durus]

Gmail? You might as well CC: all of your correspondence to the NSA.

[LurkingSince'98]

Hi 2nd...

for those who would rather not cc the NSA on their every thought there is www.readnotify.com.

It cost a little but well worth the cost. It tracks every email that you append .readnotify.com to the end of their email address.

Number of times they open it, number of times it is forwarded, etc.

good stuff

Lurking’

[KrisKrinkle]

“you can see when someone has read your email”

Does that include the NSA? Can you see when the NSA has read you’re email?

(No, I didn’t read the entire article.)

[zeugma]

Little of this tracking stuff will work if you use a decent email client. Thunderbird won’t load =any= remote content unless you tell it to.

[McGruff]

Woah. I didn't know about this little trick.

They know because when you open the email, it contains a hosted image, it queeries a website to load that image and that website knows that you have provided that image. Therefore each time you open that image, that website send that image again, so it knows if you looked once or twice.

I mean, i know you think right inside your text only formatted emails, but there’s a 1×1 pixel image cleverly being used to see where someone is located when they opened the image (thanks to the IP request of the device) and how many times (user behaviour). Yeah there are caveats, cached images, images off be default but overall you saying its impossible is simply you not even having read the article.

Guess best thing is to turn off loading of images unless it's a trusted site.