Email Open Tracking

systems/email-tracking.md · System · email, tracking, intent, comms, alerts, analytics

unverified: no trust signals recorded yet

A 1x1 pixel in every outbound email; opens recorded with device/geo/bot-flag; three operator alert signals plus data for the digest.

Email Open Tracking

Every email doozerSendEmail() sends (the single mail chokepoint) gets a unique 1x1 tracking pixel and an email_sends row. includes/email-tracking.php.

What is captured

• Pixel endpoint ?e=eopen&t=<token> (sessionless, returns a 1x1 gif, records

AFTER flushing so it never adds latency). email_opens rows carry device (mobile/desktop), coarse geo (CF-IPCountry header when present), ip_hash, and a bot flag.

• Bot / prefetch detection: Apple Mail Privacy Protection, Google/Yahoo image

proxies, and any open within ~8s of send are flagged is_bot=1 and kept out of the alerts (still counted separately). open_count vs human_open_count.

• Age is computed in the DB (TIMESTAMPDIFF(SECOND, sent_at, NOW())), never

from PHP time() vs a MySQL timestamp — that mismatch false-flags prefetches.

The three alert signals (📬 email_open ping)

1. Old email opened (>= 14 days after send) — the headline: a dormant thread

reawakening means something is up. Alert-level, 6h re-throttle per send.

2. Unusual attention — >= 4 human opens in 20 min. Hourly re-throttle.
3. High-signal first open — first human open of an important kind

(lead_forward, claim, owner_digest, lead).

All opens are stored regardless, so the Digest can report opens / devices / repeat-rate even when no alert fires. dz emailtrack for an overview; dz emailtrack do=selftest [age_days=] to exercise the flow.

Related

Tag an email with ['kind' => …, 'business_id' => …] in the doozerSendEmail opts so alerts and the digest can attribute it. ['no_track' => true] opts out. The daily digest email to the operator is itself tracked (dogfooding). See [[doozer-comms]] for the ping plumbing and [[notify-generously]] ethos.