Read Receipts in Newton

Email is an open communication protocol. Unlike chat applications, no app can own the end to end experience of emailing. That’s the reason why you can send a mail to anyone with just an email address regardless of the email app they use. Once a mail is sent, Newton has no control over it. So there’s no foolproof way of finding out if the mail is read. This is why chat applications have a more reliable Read Receipts system than email.

Then how does Newton know if the email is read?

Read Receipts in email is done somewhat similar to how a web page is tracked for visits. When you hit Send, Newton inserts a tiny transparent image in the body of the email. This image is not embedded like an inline image but is loaded from our servers when the mail is opened. That way the email still keeps a connection with Newton servers even after it’s gone. We call it the Tracking Pixel. It’s exactly as same as the images you see loading in a newsletter. The only difference is that the Tracking Pixel is tiny and transparent and hence not visible to the recipient. Newton servers get to know when the Tracking Pixel is loaded and that way we know that the email was opened. Every email sent has a unique Tracking Pixel so that we know which email was opened. We also get to know the IP address from where the request comes using which we guess the location.

What about individual Read Receipts?

This is a little trick that happens behind the scenes. When you send a mail to multiple people, Newton splits the mail into multiple copies, one each per recipient with a unique Tracking Pixel, before sending. So you not only know if the mail was read but also who read it. But in your Sent folder you will only see one mail as sent. The last part of the trick is technically not possible to do in Exchange accounts. That’s the reason why individual Read Receipts don’t work there.

Why is it not foolproof?

If the recipient’s legacy email app (read Outlook) is set to block remote images from showing in the email body, then the Tracking Pixel will not load. So you may not get to know if the mail is read. Services like Gmail proxies image requests through their servers so the location we receive can be the location of Gmail servers and not the recipient’s. Also when the recipient forwards the mail to someone else, you will still see it as the original recipient reading it one more time.

Is there a script inserted along with the Tracking Pixel?

Absolutely not. That’s a recipe for email apps to consider emails as virus. It’s just a simple html img tag with a remote url that’s inserted in the body of the email, which itself is nothing but an html page.

Will you have an option to block Tracking Pixel from competitor email apps?

We are trying to make Email Read Receipts consumer grade by making it enabled by default, light weight and showing you how useful they are. We at Newton are addicted to it. It’s not something scary like it’s made out to be when it comes to email. It’s as harmless or in fact useful like all modern chat applications. We actually want our contemporaries to also have Read Receipts and support Tracking Pixels, which would make the feature mainstream and foolproof. If all email apps start blocking Tracking Pixel from competitors it will be counter intuitive and will only make Email Read Receipts fail.

Do you have a plan to list down every timestamp when the email was read?

No. Right now it only tells you how fresh the email is in the recipient’s mind. Also, the location gives you an idea of whether he/she is traveling or not. That’s what is more important to make your next move or wait for a reply. Not a long list of who read and when. The ‘number of reads’ help when individual Read Receipts are not supported. So if you send to 2 people, and if it says read 2 times, you can make a guess that both of them read it. All Read Receipts solutions show the list because there is no design thinking there. The developer has the information, he is just puking it into the list.

Why can’t Newton provide a dashboard or more analytics on Read Receipts like other Email Tracking add-ons?

Newton is not a Sales tool. The same reason why we are not gung-ho about shared templates, time spent on emails, activity feed, attachment tracking, mail merge, internal comments, dashboard, reports and all that. If we build features for sales people it’ll become a different product altogether.

We want Newton to be just a nice, light weight email app with a modern UX and just enough features to make you productive; designed for today’s entrepreneurs, CXOs and independent professionals (software professionals, business consultants, designers, investors, movie makers, musicians, music producers, lawyers, speakers, journalists etc.). Actually they all are sales people to an extent as they are also trying to sell their services or run a business. But that doesn’t mean they need serious sales tools for emailing (but wouldn't mind some aspects of it). They like Newton as it offers the right balance when compared to bloated email apps that can do everything.

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