
Gmail Images Displayed By Default: What’s The Impact For Our Customers? - elie_CH
http://blog.mailjet.com/post/69885299950/google-images-displayed-by-default-whats-the-impact
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ChuckMcM
A friend of mine who did a bunch of mail based analytics phrased it thusly,
"Let's say your in a meadow in the jungle, and you have just noticed that
there is a tiger looking at you, are you safe?"

He was characterizing this move on Google's part as 'catching the gaze of the
tiger' which is to say everyone knew this was going on, but nobody was doing
anything about it, except now you know there is someone inside of Google
thinking about this situation, gazing at it if you will.

They may walk away, they may not.

One of the more awesome things about having email re-imagined in a security
conscious world would be that email would probably be unsuitable for
collecting marketing analytics.

So far no one else seems to that done anything. Perhaps the tiger isn't
hungry.

~~~
orliesaurus
I like your example :D

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elie_CH
So my point is:

1- Arstechnicas headline stating that "email marketing is dead" is completely
exaggerated. Email designers are very happy now, so do email marketers in
general.

2- This might change in the future, but there IS still a way to track multiple
opens with gmail (HTTP Header for the tracking pixel => "Content-Length:0"

hope this helps!

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badman_ting
There was a lot of confusion about this, at first. People didn't know if
Google just fetched th images right away, or on opening the email, or what. If
the former, unique tracking would be dead and the most information marketers
would get was that the address was valid. So, it's been nice to have people
shake out the real impact of this change, thanks.

~~~
elie_CH
OK I see! You're welcome

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pkulak
Umm... what the hell? So Google is requesting the images as soon as I open the
email? Then the proxy really doesn't make this new default as good as the old
one.

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gkoberger
You can disable it and go back to the old way. Now, at least it doesn't leak
information like location or browser.

I wish they opened every attachment as soon as it was received, so marketers
wouldn't know if it was ever opened.

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ErikAugust
I will question a solid assumption for the sake of sparking a conversation:

Does a higher open rate for a customer correlate to higher revenue generated
by that customer? Straight forward logic would suggest it does, but does it?

Here's an example: you are a SaaS business and you blast your paying but
fairly inactive clients. What if all you are doing is reminding them to
cancel?

Yes, it's anecdotal. But I have seen this happen more than once.

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elie_CH
Yes, the utility of the open rate is often misunderstood.

e.g. if you want to track revenues, you should rather track conversions with
Google Analytics (integrate the tags in the links within your email).

The #1 use of the open rate is to measure how reactive your email subscribers
are, and detect deliverability issues.

e.g. if your open rate drops for all the @hotmail destination, you know have
an issue with this particular webmail.

Contrary to the click rate, the open rate is not an "absolute metric" because
for example, some email clients would not load the images even if the
recipient read your email. But still, it's very useful as it's the variations
that matter.

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Angostura
I'm confused, does anyone know the definitive answer as to whether Google
grabs all images when the mail is received by the mail server? Or does it grab
the images when the user opens the e-mail. The fact that the article says that
open tracking still works implies the latter.

Anyone have a definitive answer?

In addition many ISPs (e.g Virginmedia in the UK) have outsource POP and IMAP
Mail to Google, I wonder if the caching applies to that e-mail too, when
collected by a regular e-mail client.

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null_ptr
What a relief that e-mail marketing spammers will still be able to track
multiple opens! What value!

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SchizoDuckie
I really hope they plug this loophole. I'd say that as soon as Google gets
wind of this, they'll patch it.

Their whole system is designed to prevent this form of tracking. You've not
just saved your email tracking business, you've merely postponed it's death.

~~~
orliesaurus
Yet google loves analytics, so why would they "plug" this hole? Have they got
something planned? Who knows!

~~~
Filligree
Google Analytics only gives out aggregated data, however.

I would feel a lot safer if Google started running their own email analytics
service, and blocked off everyone else. Oh, I can see the potential antitrust
implications, but _as a customer_ I still trust Google far more than any
company whose sole purpose is to spy on my email.

(Disclaimer: I also work for them. I don't think that'd alter my conclusion,
but possibly how strongly I feel about it.)

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damon_c
When did using single pixel images to surreptitiously track user behavior
become a service that reputable companies offered to other reputable companies
and talked about on blog posts?

It seems kinda shady no?

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btown
If images are loaded by default, doesn't this open up the old attack vector
that delayed image loading was designed to mitigate, wherein a spammer would
send separate images to plausible email addresses and use which ones were
loaded to build a database of active email addresses. Is it just that Google
is confident enough in its spam detection heuristics that it no longer needs
this long-standing line of defense?

~~~
hbbio
Unless they open the images even for non-existing accounts, as soon as the
mail is received by Google servers. If they are serious about killing the
email marketing market they don't control, that's what they should do.

