Sunday, February 23, 2014

'Streak' for Gmail notifies senders when a recipient reads an email

Here is a new feature - email tracking - that changes the way you track sent emails. Streak has come up with a Google Chrome browser extensionthat lets senders track when recipients open and read an email.
Once you have installed Streak for Gmail, the first thing to do to get started with email tracking is to toggle the feature on while composing an email using the "eye" icon. You can default email tracking to on or off in the Streak Settings tab in Gmail's settings interface.
Users get read notifications when their email is read. Users can change the default setting of desktop notifications to chat or email notifications in the Streak Settings interface.
Open any tracked email and the right sidebar of Gmail will show a timeline of reads of each individual message. You'll find the reader's name, device and location. For even more details and stats, the "Show Details" link can provide more information displayed graphically.
There is also a "Recently Viewed" link inside of Gmail. This link shows up underneath your "Sent Mail" folder, and if you don't want to see it you can just click the triangle to toggle it off.
Clicking on that link will take you to a list of your emails ordered by the date that they've most recently been read. Emails are annotated with the actual view date and they appear in an order based on when they were viewed (newest up top) instead of when you sent out the email.
By default, you can send 200 tracked emails a month but its really easy to unlock unlimited email tracking by sharing Streak Email Tracking with friends You'll be given the option to share when you first start with email tracking or when you hit the 200 email limit in a month.
"Streak is currently free while in Beta and there will always be a free plan. In the future, Streak will offer paid premium features," says the company.