I’ve been using Mailgun’s API to send emails and track opens. While it works well overall, I’ve noticed that it logs every single time an email is opened. What I really want is to know if a specific email has been opened at all, not how many times.
Is there a good way to track this using webhooks? Should I use the data Mailgun provides to identify each email, or would it be better to add custom variables when sending?
I’m not sure which approach is best. Any advice on how to set this up efficiently would be really helpful. Thanks!
I’ve tackled this issue in my projects before. One effective approach is to leverage Mailgun’s event tracking combined with custom metadata. When sending emails, attach a unique identifier as custom metadata to each message. This could be a hash of the recipient’s email and a timestamp, for instance.
Set up a webhook to receive ‘opened’ events from Mailgun. In your webhook handler, extract the unique identifier from the event data. Maintain a database or cache of ‘opened’ identifiers. When an event comes in, check if the identifier exists in your ‘opened’ storage. If it doesn’t, record it and trigger any necessary actions. If it does exist, simply discard the event.
This method gives you granular control over tracking initial opens while filtering out repeated events. It’s scalable and doesn’t rely on Mailgun’s internal tracking, giving you more flexibility in how you process and store the data.
I’ve implemented a similar system for tracking email opens. I added a unique identifier to each email as a custom header when sending—this could be a UUID or another hash value. Then I set up a webhook endpoint to capture Mailgun’s ‘opened’ events. When an event is received, I check if the unique identifier has been recorded as opened before. If not, I record it and mark it as opened in my system, ignoring subsequent events. This approach gives you clear first-open identification and reliable tracking.
hey aroberts, i’ve dealt with this before. you can add a custom variable when sending emails, like a unique ID. then use mailgun’s webhook to catch ‘opened’ events. in your backend, mark that ID as ‘opened’ on first event. ignore subsequent events for same ID. works great for me!