Warning: this post may make you paranoid…

I’m writing an article about organizations’ use of wikis, and I sent out a small email blast to a select group of contacts. I got a note back from my mother:

Beth, I don’t know if I have a wiki. What is a wiki?

I know my mom doesn’t have a wiki. Why in the world would I have selected her for an email blast about wikis?

Mom was in that select group of contacts because I created a list of people who had engaged in some of my previous emails. I wrote the email blast about wikis to make it look personal, and I sent it to people who had clicked on at least one link in at least one of my emails in the past.

Tracking email behavior is quite a science. Each time I send a newsletter out, I get reports of how many emails were delivered, how many people opened the email, how many people clicked on the email, how many times, etc. And I know exactly who clicked and when. I know that San Diego ex-boyfriend #1 opens each email exactly one time but doesn’t click on anything. I know San Diego ex-boyfriend #2 went to my website the other day, and that made my heart race a little (was he going to call? Nope.). [I also know that after this post, both San Diego ex-boyfriends are going to unsubscribe from everything with my name on it.]

My basic little email service costs $30 a month. As a freelance copywriter, I find myself creating more and more email campaigns for companies who have invested thousands in sophisticated email tracking/drip marketing services. We write one email, and based on what the person does from that first email (clicks this, ignores that), we write other emails that will go out automatically. For example, I get emails from Staples. I was looking for furniture for my new office, so I clicked on a furniture ad. For the next three weeks, I received all kinds of ads from Staples about office furniture sales. This is not a coincidence.

When I tell people I write email campaigns like this, I’m often surprised about how surprised people are that their behaviors are being tracked. But this has been happening for many years. Systems are getting more sophisticated, but for quite some time people have been able to determine if you’ve taken any action on an email you received. The same goes for your click behavior on a website. People can tell where you came in, what you clicked, how long you stayed, where you left, etc.

Of course, I teach sessions on improving your email open rate, and I’m equally surprised about the number of organizations that do not track email statistics. I work with a lot of professional nonprofit associations, and many are still using the BCC method for mass emails, where they officially send the email to themselves and put hundreds of recipients into the BCC field.

When I track people’s clicking habits, I find out what types of topics interest my readers. For example, my last newsletter focused on free and low-cost tech tools, and I had a small teaser of some of the tools in the body of the email. An unusually high number of people clicked on the link to the free wiki, and that prompted my decision to write an article about organizations’ use of wikis. I can also see who clicks through to my website, and that gives me info about who might be interested in my services. But I generally don’t bug people. I just like the stats.