Hey All,
I want to bring up the topic of tracking, specifically in relation to the All Mozillian email list.
For years many of Mozilla sites and mailing lists have used tracking to better understand how to improve experiences for subscribers as users.
As mentioned on the Smart On Tracking website:
By the way…
Mozilla sites are no exception. Like most other Web sites, we also use third party tools to improve user experience. For more info see our Website Privacy Notice.
In our privacy policy it clearly states that marketing communications often have some tracking to see how many people (on aggregate) open emails and how many people click on links. (The same tracking that Discourse shows!)
It helps us better understand how active lists are, and what emails and topics are most interesting to our communities. You can easily opt out of the emails altogether or just prohibit tracking by viewing emails as text only.
From the Privacy Policy…
Email: Our marketing communications are optional to receive and you can unsubscribe from the footer of the email or by updating your Mozilla email preferences. You can disable the functionality of clear GIFs by viewing emails from us in “text only” format.
So let’s talk specifically about the All Mozillians email list that goes to all vouched Mozillians (approx 3,000 people).
We use Exact Target (recently bought by Sales Force) to send emails on this list and enabling tracking in this program would allow us to collect aggregate data (not individual data) to know how many people open emails, and click links.
For years we have had no tracking on that list and have been regularly losing subscribers. In order to use our community lists effectively I believe it’s time to transparently and openly turn tracking back on in this list so that we can understand how to share better emails that people actually care about.
I think that tracking is not inherently evil but it’s the lack of consent and transparency that causes problems.
So let’s talk about it! How can we use tracking to create better experiences while respecting people’s privacy? Why should we or why shouldn’t we put tracking on this and other community lists?
-Lucy