VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

Tracking Beacons

Tracking beacons are images placed into mail merges for letters sent by e-mail. What's special about them is that these images aren't included directly in those e-mails, instead they're HTML links that point to images on your VSys Live site.

Ever wonder which e-mails get delivered and read? The various spam filtering tools normally prevent an e-mail server from saying "I delivered this message", and there's no formal and standard way of being sure that someone received and read your message. (Read receipts are lovely, but most people block them.)

Thus, VSys Live tracking beacons. Create them within your VSys Live site:

Description	Your text; not used by VSys Live.
Image	A named image on your site. This should be a real image like your logo rather than a 1x1 graphic.
User code	This forms part of the URL that will be used for the image.

Then embed them within letter templates: Insert... -> Data field --> System --> Tracking beacon --> Main Site VSys Dude Beacon. (The beacon's name will be prefixed by the site name since you could have more than one VSys Live site, and you'll select one of your own beacons.)

When VSys sends out an e-mail with a tracking beacon in it, VSys embeds a link to the image on the VSys Live site. That link includes tracking codes for the generated letter and for the recipient.
When someone receives the e-mail and views that image, VSys Live "knows" what letter and person the image refers to, and marks the letter as "Sent and verified".

This doesn't always work. Why? If the e-mail is viewed in:

An older e-mail program that doesn't know how to retrieve external images, the recipient won't see the image.
A modern e-mail program that intentionally doesn't retrieve external images, or only does it selectively, the recipient won't see the image.
A browser mail program like Gmail where the image is only shown if the user clicks on "Show images from somebody@organization.com", the image may or may not be shown.

The good news is that if VSys Live marks the letter as "Sent and verified" then you know for sure that the image was shown and the user got the e-mail. (If that doesn't happen, the e-mail may or may not have been delivered and seen, we just don't know for sure either way.)