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Mike Chinni

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setting delivery & read receipts in mailto links

I have a mailto link in a PDF form. I want to have the generated message include (by default) both delivery & read receipts. What header/value pairs do I need to set in the mailto link to have that happen?
Avatar of David Favor
David Favor
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To know when a message a message is delivered + opened requires message tooling.

For example if you use a relay service like MailGun, then Webhooks fire every time a message changes state.

There's now way to... do this via mail headers...

Normal ways of doing this...

1) For delivery tracking, the SMTP transaction must be tracked + when the target SMTP server returns a "Message has been queued" success code, then you know the message has been delivered.

2) For open tracking, normally a 1x1 transparent pixel is injected into the message, which is read when message is opened, so server has log of the image access.

Unless you're a very serious coder, you'll use a system like MailGun which already provides all this data for you.

Also, MailGun provides very high deliverability.

You can just send a message + expect it to be delivered. You must use a relay service with high deliverability or set a fairly complex mail infrastructure, then warm up both your sending IP + each domain sending over your IP. This process can take a very long time, unless you know exactly how to fast track IP warming.

Likely best you use a relay service.
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