How to get read receipts for sent mails in Gmail

There are times when you need an assurance that the email that you sent has been read. Isn’t it? You’re even curious to know whether the email that you have sent with all excitement and enthusiasm via your Gmail account has been really read by the recipeint. But there’s no such feature available in Gmail. ‘Read Receipts’ feature is available in desktop email applications like Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes but not in Gmail or other web-based email applications. So what do we do then? Wait! There’s a way out.

A free service named SpyPig shall address this problem of yours. SpyPig is a ‘free email read receipt‘ service that works with very well with Gmail. It requires no installation and sign-ups (except if you require custom tracking image. We shall talk about tracking images further). You’re not required to change the content or the way in which you send email.

How it works?

That’s quite simple. SpyPig provides you a tracking image which you have to embed in your outgoing emails. When the recipients open your emails, you receive email notifications from SpyPig.

The Process

1. Visit http://www.spypig.com
2. Enter your email address and message title available on the website to get the tracking image. You can choose amongst pig-face icons or a plain white square icon as a tracking image. The advantage of using a plain white tracking image is that the recipient will not know that you have embedded a tracking image in the email.
3. Copy the generated tracking image and paste it in anywhere in the email that you will be sending. Ideally, the tracking image should be pasted at the end of the email.
4. Done! Sit back and wait for receipient to open your mail so that you receive an email notification right in to your inbox.