Click tracking links in emails

[Lou]

Hi, is there any chance that PnP might stop using click tracking in emails? IMO, it is not only dishonest, it is also a lot more work on your side.
If you send an email with links, they will show up properly, no worries.
But if you go through the trouble of tricking members into clicking on a tracking link by masking the link with the appearance of PnP URL, that is not only a lot of extra work but it is also pretty dishonest and I am surprised at that practice.

But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to explain why you choose to track members who are doing nothing but help out poor pups in need. Click tracking is a pretty low practice that I expect from rich companies (that actually get rich off of us, cash cows) but PnP is a charity organization, not a merchandise webpage.

So PnP leadership, why do you send out emails with links secretly pointing to SendGrid.net?
Example: https://u1688509.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/cli ... kingIdHere>>

[mikegreen]

Hi Lou,

Thanks for your note.
It is used to track how many emails are being opened and clicked thru in order to optimize notifications, identify long-gone users (who might be filtering the messages into a PNP folder, never looking at them for years), and troubleshoot problems (ie, open rate was 10% and dropped to 2% all of a sudden.. or, click rate was 4% and now its 0 - maybe the email notif app broke itself..).

A few clarifications I'd like to get...
Can you explain why you feel it is dishonest?
I don't believe it is extra work on the forum side?
Click tracking is common in nearly any mass-mailing system these days - can you explain why you feel its a low practice?

There is no marketing or storing of the data for any other purpose. It has helped us greatly reduce the # of emails being sent and always trashed - in some cases, folks getting 300 messages a week that they had not opened in years.

thanks,
Mike

[Lou]

Hi Mike,

thank you for the speedy reply.
In my opinion (and I highlight that is is only my opinion), any tracking of people's movements, actions or activities is invasion of privacy. However, I am a pretty private person and thus don't like being spied on by anybody.
Which is why I expressed that spying on great honest folks who try to help pups in need is wrong, low and dishonest.
However, if you are truly using the tracking only for good purposes and to improve the email service, that is acceptable practice (in my opinion).
You can imagine I am tired of everybody selling emails, browser history, clicks, phone numbers, etc. A very dishonest world we live in.
Which is why I prefer to socialize with pups. They are always honest. I always know what they want - only two things: love and food.

Thank you for your explanations and honesty.
Lou

[mikegreen]

Hi Lou,

This is the kind of stuff we get out of it -

stats.png

I only look at it in detail if we're experiencing a problem, or have an automated alert show up that something is trending really high or low all of a sudden. We combine it with bounce/dropped emails to make sure we don't continually send to bad emails, ensuring higher deliverability.

As far as privacy goes, yahoo/gmail/microsoft/etc are all tracking what emails you get, what you click on, and even how far down you scroll to read things. In the industry, there's a saying "If you are not paying for the product, you are the product" - for better or worse!

thanks,
Mike