

Show HN: Email open rates are stupid. - aarlo
http://mirapost.com/engagement_time

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anigbrowl
This is why I block graphics, run mail in a separate browser instance etc.
GTFO of my business.

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derwiki
... but for the other 99.999% of people on the internet, this is more
information to glean from email marketing campaigns.

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barumrho
How do they determine engagement time or whether the email was deleted?

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dangrossman
I have no idea (didn't find out from a quick browse through the site), but the
first thing that came to mind was an image in the mail, pointing to a server
that slowly trickles a response without ever finishing so it can measure how
long the other end is listening.

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barumrho
I guess that could work if mail clients don't have timeouts for images.

I still can't imagine how they would detect deletion though.

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dangrossman
They're just calling "viewed for <x seconds" a deletion, it seems...

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phzbOx
I'll be grumpy and say I'm surprised of how fast it reached first position on
HN. However, I have to agree that there's a huge difference between deleting
an email and opening it :p Great idea, good luck with it.

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molecule
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -
Bill Hicks

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo>

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AznHisoka
I need something like this. Great idea! Run with it!

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aarlo
Thanks! Let me know what you think. aarlo@mirapost.com

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rorrr
Lies. There's no way to determine if an email got deleted (unless you somehow
buy data from GMail, hotmail, yahoo mail, etc).

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aarlo
Lie. If it was read for only a couple seconds, it's effectively a delete.

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JonLim
I would think that can be a wildly inaccurate statistic. Some people may click
into the email, scan it within a second or two, and click out.

That would count as a delete?

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aarlo
If they "click out" and move onto another message, they'll probably never read
your email again. So for the marketer it's the same as a delete (and likely is
an actual delete).

If they click on a link inside the message, that shouldn't get counted as a
delete.

Feel free to ping me with more questions - aarlo@mirapost.com. Always looking
to chat with others in the email world :)

