Building an Email Tracking System in Next.js and Node.js

Email tracking is a crucial feature for monitoring user engagement with your emails. By tracking email opens, you can gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns. In this blog post, we’ll walk through a simple way to implement email tracking using Next.js, Node.js, and React.

What is Email Tracking?

Email tracking involves embedding an invisible tracking pixel (1×1 pixel image) inside the email body. When a recipient opens the email, the image loads from the server, triggering a request that we can capture to log the email open event.

Setting Up Email Tracking in Next.js

Let’s build a basic email tracking system using Next.js API Routes.

1. Creating an API Route for Tracking

Create a new API route in pages/api/track-email.ts:


import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from 'next/server';

export const GET = async (req: NextRequest) => {
  try {
    const searchParams = req.nextUrl.searchParams;
    const id = searchParams.get('id');

    if (!id) {
      return NextResponse.json({ success: false });
    }

    console.log(`Email with ID ${id} was opened.`);

    return NextResponse.json({ success: true });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    return NextResponse.json({ success: false });
  }
};

2. Embedding the Tracking Pixel in Emails

Now, let’s modify our email template to include a tracking pixel:


import React from 'react';
import { Html, Head, Body, Container, Text, Img } from '@react-email/components';

const EmailTemplate = ({ name, id }) => {
  return (
    <Html>
      <Head />
      <Body>
        <Container>
          <Text>Hi {name},</Text>
          <Text>Here is your website health report!</Text>
          <Img
            alt="Email tracker"
            height="1"
            width="1"
            src={`https://your-domain.com/api/track-email?id=${id}`}
          />
        </Container>
      </Body>
    </Html>
  );
};

export default EmailTemplate;

3. Testing the Email Tracking

Send an email using your preferred email service.
Open the email and check if the tracking pixel request is logged in the API route.
Observe the console logs to confirm the tracking request is received.

Conclusion

With this simple setup, we have successfully implemented email tracking in Next.js. This approach is useful for monitoring email engagement and optimizing email marketing strategies. However, keep in mind that email tracking has limitations (e.g., some email clients block images by default). Always respect user privacy and comply with data protection laws when implementing tracking solutions.