Who is reading your mail?

[somarco]

To be a successful marketer, you need to know what works, what doesn't. It also helps to know who is reading your email and when they are reading it.

For several months I have used Read Notify to track solicitations, follow up and other important email sent to clients & prospects.

Read Notify can track all your outgoing email or you can choose which ones you need to track. Read Notify will send you an instant message letting you know that your email is being read right now. You can also log in to track email sent and see which ones have bounced, which ones have been opened, and how many times the email has been opened.

Read Notify allows me to sort out the tire kickers from those who are serious. When someone requests information and I notice 5 days later the email is still unopened I follow up with a phone call. "Did you get my email?"

"Yes, I did, just haven't made a decision yet".

"Was the proposal in line with your expectations?"

"Well the price is a little high but you are in the running"

"Really? According to my reports the email has not even been opened".

BUSTED!

Even more helpful is receiving immediate notification that someone is reading my mail. I will call them up as soon as my notification is in hand and often they will say they were just reading my mail. I feign surprise and proceed to ask them what questions they have and immediately move to cement the deal.

Can't tell you how many deals I close and more importantly, how many folks I no longer waste time with because of Read Notify.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Fantastic!!! And just how long have you been keeping this to youself! lol.

 

[somarco]

Using the service for about 6 months. Usually will get past firewalls unless you are emailing to large companies. Some ISP's like Earthlink (spamblocker) will kick it out. Also Gmail will sometimes put it in the spam folder.

Not foolproof but close to it.

Also tried some free services but they were even more spotty than Read Notify.

I don't use it all the time, but enough to make it worth the small price they want for the service.

 

[djs]

It is good to know the status of your emails. As a previous webguy, I'll add a warning about these systems as well. 2 things happen when you add these tracking systems.....

- Spam detection. In almost every spam detection system, a 'read' detection adds points to it being considered spam. By itself, it may not make it spam, but combined with other things, it will lower your deliverability.
- It's not 100% accurate. I can read email all day long and you not ever see me do it. In fact, more email clients are doing this by default, to help prevent the spam tracking looking for a valid email address.

That said, balance that risk with
- Knowing who reads your emails is a good way to focus your marketing efforts and sales time.
- Companies like readnotify are very aware of the spam concerns. They should be spending a lot of time to make sure their emails do not get listed as spam.

Internet marketing isn't the fun it used to be Spammers have made it much more difficult to get legitimate junk mail through the system


Dan

P.S. I gave up trying to track opens (never tried that hard). I realized that if I'm shopping stuff, I don't remember what emails I've opened and which ones I haven't, and I get them all confused. I just follow up with the phone call. It becomes obvious if they read my email. I don't let the fact they haven't stop me from selling though...

 

[J.R.]

- It's not 100% accurate. I can read email all day long and you not ever see me do it. In fact, more email clients are doing this by default, to help prevent the spam tracking looking for a valid email address.

How is this accomplished?

 

[somarco]

a 'read' detection adds points to it being considered spam

This one get's by most spam detectors which is why I like it. No pop-ups unless you specifically request it. I realize nothing is fool proof, but this is reasonably accurate. Even makes it thru AOL which seems to have more spam filters than any ISP.

 

[somarco]

I invite anyone to send me an email. I will send one back to you and then tell you when it was opened.

[email protected]

 

[Alsky]

That Read Notify seems very sneaky... I love it! Which plan are you using somarco, the basic or premium? I think I want to try their free trail. Thanks for the cool suggestion.

Al

 

[somarco]

Premium

 

[NHB_MMA]

Am I missing something? This will help you know when a tirekicker is lying to you and wasting your time, but if you "bust" him, he's just going to get pissed about it and hang up on you. I can't see any sales coming from this.