Email Tracking — An Annoyingly Ingenious Idea
You might not think much of those annoying emails that you get on a daily basis … but should you? What if all those emails were being tracked before you opened them? What if someone knew exactly what was going on? That can’t actually happen … can it?
This blog post is inspired by none other than … Medium! Thank you for keeping an eye on my emails and tracking what exactly is going on, it’s exactly what I wanted! Don’t worry, I’m not mad, but what exactly are you getting by tracking my emails? Well that’s what we’re here to talk about!
Thank you to UglyEmail for helping me out here, and making me realize that I was being watched. Ugly email is a Gmail extension that checks if emails are being tracked. If they are indeed being tracked, an ‘evil eye’ exposes the email. So why exactly is Medium tracking me?
Essentially, the emails sent out by Medium are a sort of marketing/advertising strategy. By sending these emails, Medium is trying to promote and create more interest in the company and what it has to offer. Upon looking at what they send me, it is mostly emails about blogs that would likely interest me. I can’t be mad at them for trying to build their brand while also trying to entertain me. To be fair, they probably warned me and asked me for permission to send me emails when I signed up, and I probably didn’t bother reading anything, instead opting to click ‘I agree’ without knowing what I was signing up for.
By tracking the emails they send, Medium are able to see exactly what content I open and my preferences and behaviours. With that information, they are better able to market towards me based on what I like and open. Email accounts are very valuable to companies like this, it is how they grow and expand. That could be the reason why I had to sign up with my Gmail account when setting up an account for Medium, so that they could better advertise to me, to make me stay on the site.
Although this may seem very scary to some of you, you can relax! There are rules and regulations as to what is able to be viewed by these companies. Medium is not allowed to use this tracking to track, upload, or collect data that can identify an individual (Chaffey, 2017).
Simply put, when you open an email from Medium, you send information to them about what you opened. This helps them to market and advertise their brand towards their customers and the individual (that’s you). It makes you wonder, over the years and years of web browsing, what kind of information have you sent? Have you ever wondered why you get certain emails, or why certain advertisements show up on your Facebook or Instagram? I recommend everyone download UglyEmail, and see exactly where your information is headed!
So how exactly do companies like Medium accomplish this ? Check out the video below for a real simple explanation, you can even try this at home!
Works Cited
Chaffey, D. (2017, February 07). Email campaign tracking with Google Analytics — Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice. Retrieved February 23, 2017, from http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-analytics/email-campaign-tracking-with-google-analytics/
