The rise of Internet accessibility to the masses has revolutionized the way people work, play and communicate. Email communication has become the most popular means of information exchange in business and personal use. Personal computers, notebook, hand held devices and cellular telephones all allow you to communicate via email.

Email has rapidly grown to rival the telephone as the centerpiece of effective communication. Although email tends to be less personal than a voice conversation, it has become a preferred means of exchanging data such as quotations, invoices, literature, references, contact information, pictures, URLs, files and many other online resources. This phenomenon has given rise to the misuse and malicious use of email.

Many of us spend countless hours weeding through Spam messages. Those with tight email filters wake up in a cold sweat wondering if that one important message got sent to the Spam folder. Even though some governments have taken steps to curb Spam, most people spend about 20 minutes a day deleting messages offering better mortgage rates, free vacations or cheap Viagra. It is no wonder that many businesses are turning to email tracking services to ensure that their valuable information is being delivered to the right person and read.

I am sure you would not be surprised that not every email that you send is received or read by the intended recipient. There are many reasons for these lost communication nuggets including Spam filtering, overloaded inbox, forwarding rules or simple avoidance. The solution is email tracking!

What is email tracking?

Email tracking is a means of ensuring that your email is matched with its intended recipient. It utilizes secure, digitally time-stamped certificates to reveal the exact time and date that your e-mail was received and read.

Additional notification options may include how long it was read for, who read it, the approximate physical location of the reader, whether or not your email was forwarded to someone else, what kind of computer was used to read it, what file formats the reader can accept (eg. PDF, MS Word, Excel), whether or not your email has been published on the Internet and countless other tracking mechanisms.

Why track your email?

Many businesses find it imperative to determine if prospective customers receive and read their messages from email promotions, request for quotations or product information. Email tracking is the most effective way of identifying whether the campaign was effective. Sales managers often wonder if their sales representatives are being thorough in their email communication. Email tracking provides a tool for accountability. Special reports can identify number of messages sent and amount of time spent by the recipient reading the message.

What if you sent a quotation with the wrong numbers? If the email has not been read, you may even be able to retract or delete the email. Some tracking services even allow you to create self-destruct or email that can be retracted after a period of time. If the email is never opened or assumed to be lost, you could retract the old message and/or send a new message.

Tagging messages and watching their progress adds to secure communications. Many medical, law enforcement and legal firms utilize this service to enhance security of sensitive information. Email tracking helps ensure information is read by the right person!

Some companies may opt to set up their own servers in order to keep control internally and others may use an online service. Both options are available from a number of providers. I recently visited www.mailtracking.com to take a test drive. It was very simple to use this service.

Do you want to try email tracking yourself?

Simply get a free account at www.mailtracking.com (or another free email tracking competitor) and start sending your emails with an added extension .mailtracking.com. Therefore, if you want to send a tracked message to jdoe@hotmail.com, you simply add the extension as follows jdoe@hotmail.com.mailtracking.com. As the email message travels across the world wide web, you will get notification of its various stages.