Tracking user activity via email

Many of our members never visit the website and simply use the email digests. As a result we get zero metrics on who has actually read a post via email.

Is is possible to add a feature that uses a tracking pixel in emails that is tracked through the admin interface so we can get a better insight into user activity.

Thanks,

Ian
forum.mitie.edu.au

4개의 좋아요

Not a bad idea! But I don’t know if it will find traction here.

Personally, I use mandrillapp.com for transactional email and like to use that to keep an eye on who’s opening and clicking links. But it’s not integrated in discourse activity tracking at all.

I’ve changed my mind, based on what @erlend_sh wrote in another topic.

Erlend’s idea, if I understand it correctly, adds on to yours by treating reading posts and messages by email the same way as reading posts and messages by web interface. So members would not see gazillions of notifications when logging in after a long period of using mailing list mode. They would also be taken to the correct spot in discussions based on what they’ve already seen by email.

Don’t know if this can be pulled off, but I like it.

Also, as I wrote there:

It is not really possible to reliably track email “opens”. So it is dangerous to pin your hopes on this.

6개의 좋아요

Using Discourse as a mailing list is already a power-user type feature, so it’s fair to expect site owners to provide their users with some extra educational material on best practices.

Here’s some docs from Mailchimp:

My open rates seem high.

Here are some common issues that can cause your open rates to be too high.

A spam filter is causing high open rates.

Aggressive spam filters will click links in incoming mail before delivering them to make sure there isn’t any malicious content. Our system automatically tracks clicks as opens, and we have no way of differentiating when a click is from a spam filter. This can sometimes lead to an unusually high number of opens from a single domain. If you notice this on your report, it’s likely the result of a spam filter. We recommend you ask your subscribers to whitelist MailChimp’s servers.

Your subscriber forwarded your email.

When your subscribers forward emails through their email client, any opens for the forwarded email are recorded as additional opens for your subscriber. Encourage subscribers to use the Forward to a Friend link instead to accurately track your opens.

Private email domains tend to have more aggressive firewalls and spam filters than Gmail or other free webmail providers. Sometimes, these network firewalls and filters can block your campaigns.

If subscribers from a certain company or private email domain have trouble receiving your MailChimp campaigns, ask them to whitelist MailChimp as a possible solution.

In this article, you’ll learn about whitelisting.

Maybe it’s too niche for core, but I’m sure a lot of email-centric communities would love to have this as a plugin.

3개의 좋아요

What about this instead?

2개의 좋아요

Is there somewhere within Discourse to pull the open and click rates of our digest emails? Or does it have to be hooked up to a third party to pull those numbers? Is it possible for Discourse to pull and send that data to our admins?

At the moment there is nothing built into Discourse. The general practice is to:

  1. Include a “hidden” gif in all emails and use it for tracking, but unfortunately even that has a bunch of false positives cause programs like gmail will preemptively cache images.

  2. Re-wrap all links with a special “tracking” param so you can see who clicked on what link.

I can see us potentially addressing (2) so you can figure out who clicks on which links. But am a bit uneasy about (1).

5개의 좋아요

Thanks Sam! Does Discourse track that information on the backend at all? Or do you know the average open and click rates for digest emails?

Does your email service not provide a dashboard with open, bounce, etc. stats ?

Digests are sent via us for hosted customers.

3개의 좋아요

I have had massive problems with this in a CRM software when the links original url is shown in the email because the re-wrapped url will look like a phishing attempt.

So changing The Discourse website to The Discourse website works fine, but changing http://www.discourse.org to http://www.discourse.org will be eaten up by spam filters (note the underlying urls in these links).

4개의 좋아요

안녕하세요, 이 스레드가 2년 넘게 방치된 것 같아 후속 질문을 드립니다. 현재도 Discourse 이메일의 전송 크기, 오픈율, 클릭률(CTR)을 추적할 수 없는 상태인가요?

1개의 좋아요

맞습니다 - 이는 내장되어 있지 않습니다.

Jeff의 게시글은 여전히 매우 관련성이 높습니다.

4개의 좋아요

좋아요. 확인해 주셔서 감사합니다 @justin :slight_smile:

1개의 좋아요

아마도 이메일 템플릿에 Google Analytics를 추가하는 것이 하나의 방법일 수 있습니다:

수정:
적어도 이메일 열람 추적을 위해서는 이 방법이 작동합니다.

안녕하세요! 알림 이메일에 GA4 추적 설정을 하는 과정에서 조금 문제가 생겼습니다.

이메일로 전송되는 키(예: %{invite_link}) 끝에 추적 코드를 붙이는 방법을 시도해 보았지만, Google이 제가 추가한 source, medium, campaign을 인식하지 않는 것 같습니다. 모든 설정이 올바른지 확인하기 위해 Google Campaign URL 빌더를 사용했는데도 여전히 작동하지 않습니다.

최종적으로 생성된 링크는 다음과 같은 형태입니다: URL/invites/sQFAD7aZmE?t=NUMBERNUMBER&utm_source=forum_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=forum_notifications

GA에서 소스/미디어를 조회해 보면 트래픽이 (direct)/(none)으로 표시됩니다. 혹시 해결책이 있을까요?

(캐시 삭제, 다른 브라우저/컴퓨터 사용 등 여러 방법을 시도해 보았습니다)