[Vtigercrm-developers] Sending emails from vtiger

[Philip Kiff]

> On 04/04/2012 05:30 PM, Alan Lord (News) wrote:
> > Whilst I'm on the subject of emails, I've also noticed
> > that Thunderbird thinks mails from vtiger are spam,
> > probably due to the 1px tracking gif attached the email.
> > 
> > <img
> >
src='http://localhost/vt5.4/modules/Emails/TrackAccess.php?record=127&mailid
=129&app_key=ff9e00dbe5fdb32b5d31be594c76b162'
> > alt='' width='1' height='1'><p>
> > 	My test email message</p>

John Crisp wrote:  
> Just wondering whether that applies to all mails ? Think
> you are right about the remote image. Maybe there should
> be an option as to whether you want an email tracked ?
> 
> I guess it won't get flagged as spam if you are in the
> receivers address book (in TB).

We have found that some of our outgoing vtiger mass emails are flagged as
SPAM by a variety of mail clients and servers. One culprit is definitely the
1px tracking gif, though in our case, it is rare that a server will block
email on that basis alone. There are other slightly odd things that the
vtiger mailer does in addition to this that may also trigger a spam flag. I
have seen scattered discusssions on the vtiger forums about emails being
flagged as spam, so this is an ongoing issue for some folks.

In our version, we've entirely removed the tracker code from that part of
the mailer, but it is too early to tell if that has made much difference in
our success rates. The inclusion of the tracking code should definitely be a
configurable option, I think, since it is something that is almost certainly
going to increase the chances of an email getting blocked, and the code
seems to be included regardless of whether an install is actually making use
of that data. 

In terms of data gathering, I'm not sure how much stock marketing folk place
in the data supplied by 1px image tracking these days. I certainly doubt
that such data is very reliable, especially since all modern versions of
Outlook now routinely block such tracking images unless a user has
explicitly allowed them to appear. Email marketers these days seem more
likely to track the links that are clicked on inside an email rather than to
use the invisible 1px image trick to track if a user opens a message.

Phil.