HTML Email and ColdFusion 1

[ugliesguy]

Hi. Here's the scoop. I need a way to determine if a person who is sent an HTML email is actually able to view the HTML email. My company currently sends text email announcments to people who have opted in to our email newsletters. I trying to figure out a way to track the individuals who open the HTML emails. The only way I can think of doing this is to have a unique .gif or .jpg image named for each individual in the email list. Doing this would be simple, the problem I have is I don't know how to monitor if the image is ever requested from the server. Does anyone have any ideas? Ideally, once the image is know to be requested by an individual, their profile could be updated to show that they can in fact receive HTML email.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, we're running CF 4.0 with MS SQL 7.0 .

Thanks...

 

[GunJack]

The image approach is what I would recommend and I can show you a way that doesn't require an image for each person. You can either use a transparent gif, a 1x1 pixel high image, an image you already planned to put in the html, etc.. but just take one image link and set it up like this:

<img src=&quot;serverName.com/scripts/scriptName.cfm?id=7&quot;> (id=7 is your user identifier)

In the scriptName.cfm, do any type of logging you need via CF and then return the previously mentioned graphic like this:

..... Code to store the user opening the e-mail using id=7 ....
<cfcontent type=&quot;image/gif&quot; deletefile=&quot;NO&quot; file=&quot;d:\inetsrv\

http://wwwroot\myGif.gif&quot;>

The cfcontent tag will send the gif file back as if the <img> tag pointed directly to an image and the coding before the cfcontent will allow you to do the logging you require.

Let me know if you have any problems,
GJ

 

[MarcDePoe]

Hey GJ,

sweet technique!

 

[GunJack]

Glad you like

GJ

 

[ugliesguy]

Thanks GunJack! Worked great on the test I ran. I'll be adding it to our next email blast.

Thanks again

-Michael

http://www.uglies.com

 

[neofactor]

Found this post... and ironically it is exactly what I made for a site.

I had some questions though about user tracking.
I was tracking the following info on each hit...

<cfquery datasource=&quot;#request.DSN#&quot;>
INSERT INTO tb_hittracker
(hit_IDTAG, hit_date, hit_ip, hit_server, hit_url, hit_browser, hit_pathinfo ,hit_referer)

VALUES(
'#URL.ID#',#now()#, '#CGI.REMOTE_ADDR#',
'#CGI.SERVER_NAME#', '#CGI.PATH_INFO#',
'#CGI.HTTP_USER_AGENT#', '#CGI.QUERY_STRING#',
'#CGI.HTTP_REFERER#')
</cfquery>

But I feel limited in what I can track...
Places like Extreme Tracking can track so much more:

http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/sample/nph-summary.cgi?tag=example

How do i track all that other cool stuff? Screen size, referals to my page, ect... the referer cgi just returns to me the page that I came from.

I know you will say... just add that into your Coldfusion page you want to track, but i want to use it on html pages as well using this technique above.

Thanks for any help with this.
-- David McIntosh