If you are using Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Server, you can easily request read receipts and get notified when your email is opened by the recipient(s).

As such a tracking feature in not available in web email like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or the new Windows Live Hotmail, here’s an extremely effective and free solution that works with every email program.

The service is called SpyPig and it will instantly send you a notification when your email is read by the recipient. The read receipt will also have other details like the IP address of the recipient and the exactly number of times he or she read your email.

Using SpyPig is simple - type your email address (where you wish to receive the notification) and they’ll give you a small tracking graphic that you have to embed in your outgoing Gmail message via a simple drag-n-drop (just like the Gmail Smileys). That’s it.

Now if you are worried about sharing your email address , read our previous email read receipt hack that shows you how to construct your own SpyPig kind of solution using Google Analytics or Statcounter.

The SpyPig trick however works only with Rich Text or HTML email, not plain text.