Knowing when an email is opened might alter how you interact with email forever?

I worked on this tool at HubSpot. They acquired us (Chime - chimeapp.com) to help build this.

I think it may change the way we interact through email (starting with sales first, that's the target right now). I do think this will help salespeople to approach their leads without requiring a context change.

I recently left the team. As neat as a "read-receipt" is, I think tools like this encourage the fact that the consumer doesn't know everything. It didn't align with my vision for being fully transparent.

Hubspot released a freemium tool to the world today called Signals. It is a chrome extension that essentially pops up a notification on your desktop when your email is read.

Is this a good thing? If this gets widely adopted it could potentially change how we treat email. Dynamics might shift with information like this. 'I know you know etc'

Discuss :)

How does it know when someone has read the email?

I think they include a one pixel transparent image that is stored on their server. When your email loads that image, they know. Something like that anyways!

That is pretty interesting!