P.S. This Tech-Letter came 2 day, late. Apologies. My mailing service was undergoing some maintenance. But on-to today's letter.

We've figured this out for Whatsapp, iMessage, Facebook, and almost every other social media out there. Why not emails too?

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Mailtrack

Note: the following tech-letter is specifically for Gmail, though there are surely similar options for other mail clients out there.

In most online-cases, I tend to opt-out of "read receipts" because I don't care to know if people have read my messages or not - it's unnecessary social anxiety for me. That being said... I can't say the same for emails. 

I love emails (if you haven't already noticed), and since email communication isn't always instant, I like to know when people receive my emails, and if they were opened or not. You'd be surprised to know how many people ignore your emails altogether, or open it immediately and answer you several hours later (me). 

Mailtrack is a free (with premium options) Google Chrome (or Brave) extension that does this for you. Once you add this extension to your browser and link it to your Gmail account, you can choose to have it inform you a whole lot of things.

First thing's first, add this extension to your browser and link it to your Gmail account, like in the image below.

The free version offers your basic functionaly, but there are also premium options available that include more analytic tools, Android apps, real time notifications, and more. But again, the free version is enough.

After linking this to your Gmail account, feel free to use it like normal! Nothing changes - you don't have to enable anything or click anywhere. Mailtrack lets you email up to 200 people at once and track individual opens too.

Say you want to email someone, the first thing you will notice is a "Sender notified by Mailtrack" signature at the bottom of your email. If you're okay with your recipient knowing you're tracking the email, all good. But if not... here's how you'd address it:

Pretty simple, huh? Just click on the X, and close the notification that pops up. Your emails will no longer contain that "Sender notified with Mailtrack" message.

After that, using this is pretty simple. For those familiar with WhatsApp, this will seem familiar. But for the rest of you, Mailtrack marks a message as "delivered" if it has one checkmark (✔️) and "read" if it has two (✔️✔️)

In the image above, you'll see it has only one checkmark. So the recipient hasn't opened the email yet.

Once they read it, the second checkmark might appear instantly for you (or take a minute to update). If you scroll to the image at the top of this email, you'll notice a little message that pops up when you hover over the two checkmarks, letting you know if and when your email was opened, and how many times. 

That being said, if you ever want to send an email without tracking it, you can do so by clicking on the checkmarks next to "Send", while composing your email. It gives you the option to disable, as well as go through some other settings.

Price? Free (w/ premium options) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Format? Browser extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐