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I'm hearing a lot about "open time personalization" for emails, and I'm having trouble finding an explanation of how the technology actually works. The only part of an email I can think of that would be possible to change at open time would be image content. It could go like this:

  1. Embed some details about the recipient or other info in a query string on the image
  2. The user opens the email, requests the image, and the server decides what to send back based on the query string, time of day, weather, product stock levels, etc.

But, I'm seeing references that seem to point to more elaborate customization (changing which product is featured for example). How could it be possible to change the text of an email at open time? Am I missing something here or is it just fancy image swapping? How could this work with Gmail's image caching?

Dominic P
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  • I'm looking into this right now for a client. I really don't want to do this, dealing with emails is unpleasant enough as it is, but I'm doing my due diligence. So far I've found out that there's _some_ support for iframes and/or JavaScript in some email clients. No idea if for instance the JS support includes ability to make XHR requests (makes me cringe to think that it could). – Rafał G. Aug 22 '17 at 13:08
  • Thanks for commenting. I really doubt XHR/fetch will be allowed in email, but that would certainly work. The iframe angle is definitely interesting. I really just want to get a good email sent by [Rebel Mail](https://www.rebelmail.com/) and take a look at the source. – Dominic P Aug 22 '17 at 19:49

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