Re: How to know whether a person clicked a link in an email

[dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com]

Lou Quillio describes a binary world, in which his way is right and 
everyone else's is wrong.  Life is seldom so simple...or maybe simplistic.

Imagine a company that has requested and received your permission to send 
information to you by e-mail.  Assume they've gone into great detail about 
the kinds of e-mail they'll be sending andbutand that you didn't pay any 
attention to that information.

Each time they send you a mesage, they want to know how effective that 
message was, so they can fine-tune future messages.  If that sounds 
nefarious, remember that you gave them permission to send those messages, 
and each message includes a *working* opt-out link.  They don't want to 
send you spam--it's too easy for you to blacklist them.

(Did you know that one person on AOL marking a message as spam can prevent 
e-mail from that sender from being delivered to ANYONE with an AOL address? 
 "It wasn't spam?  I said you could send it?  Oops!  Sorry about that." 
Funny, except those legitimate senders may never realize their messages are 
being blocked.)

The company sending the message hopes to sell you something or entice you 
to take some action (vote for their candidate, contribute to their charity, 
whatever).  They want to know which subject line moves you to open the 
message; which version of the message moves you to buy, vote, or donate; 
which version goes straight into the junk folder or trash; which link 
withing a message gets you to act.

Remember, you told them it was OK to send the messages; they just want to 
know which ones work.  The ultimate goal, of course, is never to send you 
messages you don't want--to customize messages to you so that they contain 
information only about the things you want, the candidates you agree with, 
the charities you care about.

That's not spam.  In fact, it's an anti-spam tactic.

--David

P.S.  This subject is TOTALLY off-topic, but it's gone on a while, so I
      thought I'd put my two cents in, too.  I won't post on this topic
      again, though, because I'd prefer not to lose the privilege.  :)

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