Measure traffic from Digests

Contribute Feature

AI-generated summary

Users are discussing how to measure traffic from email digests in Discourse. HAWK initially asks if there’s a way to track clicks from digest emails, and Stephen asks if they’re using Mandrill. strager suggests Mandrill can track link clicks and open data via admin settings, but both HAWK and strager later confirm they can’t find such options. sam, a Discourse team member, clarifies that hosted customers don’t have this feature yet, as Mandrill handles link munging for tracking. Sam outlines a long-term plan: 1) Add ?digest_id=XYZ to all links in digest emails; 2) Add a tracking GIF to mark posts as “read” when the email is opened (opt-in); 3) Add general tracking to every reply email. riking suggests styling the tracking GIF to appear near the post title, like a “read” marker, and riking adds that email post styling should be improved for better visual integration. alefattorini supports the idea, and markwilkin asks for updates, noting they use Postmark — which lacks built-in tracking but could be integrated if Discourse adds the feature.

1

Is there any way to measure the click throughs from an email digest?

2 Curtiram
2

Are you using Mandrill to send Digests to users?

3

Good question. I’m on a Discourse hosted platform so I have no idea!

4

There should be some options under Admin - you sign up with Mandrill and enter them in Discourse and Mandrill spits out all sorts of relevant data like click-throughs and even email opens. It’s some real nifty stuff but a bit scary if you think about it…

5

Sounds great. I can’t find it though. Are you sure this applies to hosted sites?

6

I logged into ours and you’re right I don’t see it (we learned the system on our own DR droplet)- I’m guessing they are managing that for us. @sam could tell us for sure.

1 Curtiu
7

We don’t have this for our hosted customers, mandrill munges links inside digests to achieve this feature.

Long term there are a few things I would like us to do

  1. Add ?digest_id=XYZ to all links in digest
  2. Add a tracking “gif” so we can tell you opened the digest (and report on it)
  3. Add a general tracking gif to every reply email that sets “read” on post when you open it, opt in.
7 Curtiram
8

We could style that so it appears in the same place as the blue unread dot, which should make it obvious what’s happening to people that have an email client that puts in placeholders for blocked images.

And maybe “this image is used to mark post as read” in the title.

4 Curtiram
9

Actually, we should really get the email post styling a lot more in line with the web post styling.

2 Curtiram
10

Great suggestion, guess you can move it on feature category

1 Curtiu
11

Hi is there any update on this feature? We’re using Postmark that has some tracking features but would be nice to have this in Discourse as standard.

2 Curtiram