need email read receipt option

maxmycardagain

yahoo mail doesnt offer a RR for emails read by recipients my old outlook did

im on windows 10, any ideas?

:beer:

Roger1

Take a look at Thunderbird from Firefox.

I use Thunderbird for reading and sending e-mails, and can specify a 'read' message,

iammumtoone

Not sure about all systems but with outlook, the problem with read messages is the recipient have to agree to send back the read message.


If you are wanting proof that an email was send but the recipient might not want to see that email, I don't think this method will help you.

grumpycrab

maxmycardagain wrote: »

yahoo mail doesnt offer a RR for emails read by recipients my old outlook did

im on windows 10, any ideas?

Reinstall your old(or new) outlook? As I'm sure you are aware, RR usually only work between the same make of clients and even then its not gauranteed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_tracking#Read-receipts

DocQuincy

I'd forget about the type of read receipts where the user needs to give their permission — very few people allow them.

The better kind, that are far more reliable than I expected they would be, are where they insert a tiny tracker image into the email. The read receipt works by downloading the image, which contains a unique ID. This is the method use by email marketing software like MailChimp.

Of course, some email clients block these images by default for this very reason, but you'll find that because people use logos in their email signatures, if people trust you, you'll find the read receipt works a lot of the time.

I used to use what I regarded as the gold standard of email clients, Newton, but it was discontinued as they changed their pricing model in a really bad way and users dropped like flies. While I've never found a replacement that's as good I did trial many email clients and read receipts were important for me.

MailSpring is a client that offers read receipts and link tracking. They have a free and paid version. It's a really nice app and works on any platform but I can't use it since their send later feature requires the mail app be left open.

https://getmailspring.com/

I actually use G Suite (Google) for my emails so I pay for Gmelius which offers send later and read receipts, among many other features. It works as a browser addon so there is nothing to download (I run it through wavebox.io, which is better than a normal browser).

https://gmelius.com/

There is a limited free option but I pay $9/month for it since it is invaluable for my work. The read receipts are excellent and per-recipient — so if you send it to more than one person you know who opened it individually.

Basically, I have yet to see a decent free read receipts service other than MailSpring. If you want it for a web-based email service then you need to look at an addon - but I think they're all vendor-specific (Gmelius is for Google-only, for example).

If you are on a Mac*, Spark or Airmail may do but Spark allegedly has dubious privacy practices, you have to request a version with read receipts, and I don't think either have a mobile app. Mailspring has no mobile app; Gmelius currently has Android Beta with iOS coming very soon.

Feel free to ask any questions on specifics as I did try out a fair few last year when Newton was discontinued and found Gmelius to be a clear winner.


*I know you're on Windows; I put that for other readers

stragglebod

DocQuincy wrote: »

...

All this is great advice - if you want people to permanently block your emails as spam.


Best way to get a read receipt is to send people emails that are worth reading, and where they have an actual incentive to respond to you.

DocQuincy

stragglebod wrote: »

All this is great advice - if you want people to permanently block your emails as spam.

Best way to get a read receipt is to send people emails that are worth reading, and where they have an actual incentive to respond to you.

I think you're conflating promotional emails with spam emails. Just because an email has a single tracker image in it does not mean that it will be marked as spam or even promotional. Most people wouldn't have a clue if you were tracking them or not and so wouldn't know to mark you as spam. Usually, the worst case scenario is you don't get the read receipt. But a tracking image would not get you blacklisted with one of the big players.

As to whether an email is worth reading or not has nothing to do with whether you want a read receipt either; there are many situations where a RR is nice and someone replying is not the same as a RR.

Spam filtering is more sophisticated (DMARC, DKIM, SPF, etc) than checking for tracker images and there are legitimate reasons to have emails that may look like they have trackers in them, but don't.

Unless I can see objective evidence to the contrary I would continue to use read receipts. I've been programming for the web for a long time and have sent thousands upon thousands of legal promotional emails for companies and personally sent a lot of tracked work emails and never had a single problem in this area.

If your email account or domain is blacklisted you know about it — and I have personally only seen this happen once (to a client) in the last 15+ years and when you're blacklisted you know about it. And in this one instance this company were spamming and so deserved it.

Edited to be more constructive with clearer information.