Read and delivery receipts

Have you ever been in a situation where you send an important email, wait several days for a reply and nothing comes back? “Was the message even delivered”, you start to ask? And eventually, wonder why the message has been ignored. Stay focused, there are two ways to find out.


Email app with read receipt

The first option is using some form of tracking that is inbuilt in many of the email clients. We want to show you, how can you use this function in eM Client. While composing any message, navigate to the right part of the screen. There is a circle with three dots within. Once you click on the circle a new context menu appears. The two options at the top are what we are looking for. You can either request a delivery receipt or a read receipt. The difference between those two is self-explanatory.

Delivery receipt allows you to confirm the message has been delivered and the read receipt should notify you a message has been read, right? It is not that simple. While having a delivery receipt for each of your messages may sound useful, many email providers are letting this function go. All emails are considered as delivered and you are usually notified only when a server fails to deliver your message. So, requesting a delivery receipt has become a bit redundant.

Requesting a read receipt also behaves differently than you might expect. The idea behind this function dates back to the 1990s Outlook. Sending an email with a read receipt means the email is sent with a formal request to confirm the email has been read. The problem here is there is no way for you to tell whether your read receipt was denied, ignored, or the message was not read. That creates unnecessary confusion.

The second option would be to use some form of third-party mail tracking application. This approach usually uses tracking pixels in your message. Once the message is opened, the sender is notified back via automatic response. It is a very powerful tool and is often misused in marketing and generally any field that can benefit from some form of tracking. There have even been attempts to reduce this practice legally, but for general users, the very best protection is to disable the automatic loading of pictures, which is the default behavior in eM Client.

Generally speaking, almost any email client can use some form of tracking. Both described methods are useful tools, and while one seems a little dated, the other is quite aggressive and invasive. You can be assured eM Client is more than capable to protect your privacy while also allowing the basic form of tracking. It can provide all the functionality you may need in one attractive package.