Within the EU certain countries have strict privacy policies which may prevent you from compiling data at the individual level.
If you want to use PoliteMail to get the email metrics (opens, clicks, etc.), but keep the individuals anonymous, you can accomplish that using Exchange Aliases for your distribution groups, and retain the ability to track the email, but not at the individual level.
This method requires setting up or changing your distribution groups within Exchange as Exchange Aliases, and hiding the members of those lists from the sender. Using this types of lists (which would be used like a individual email address such as “groupname@company.com”) PoliteMail treats the send a one email message. However, because Exchange will do the distribution, PoliteMail will track multiple opens and clicks for that one alias address. This prevents PoliteMail from tracking at the individual level.
Here is a Microsoft TechNet article explaining how to set-up those types of lists.
Please note, however, that you will lose certain features as a result of sending to these types of lists.
- There is no personalization capability when sending to Exchange Alias lists with hidden membership. If you utilize the personalize feature, it will represent the alias for each individual.
- As the primary Open Rate and Click Thru Rate email metrics are calculated as unique counts, these will always display at 100% for these types of lists, as PoliteMail only sees it as a send to one person (one email address), so even one open will result in a unique rate of 100%. However, the sub-metrics Multiple Opens and Multiple Clicks will provide you with the total interactions for the entire distribution.
- There will be no segmentation or follow-up ability. Again, because the list is treated as one email address, the open/click results can not be segmented in any way, which prevents follow-up to sub-groups based upon their click-behavior (or lack thereof)
- Mixed Exchange Alias sends with regular distribution groups sends (individualized) within the same campaign will result in erroneous metrics.
Despite these reporting limitations, if individual data privacy is paramount, then setting up Exchange Aliases for those distribution groups enables email tracking with individual privacy.
