How to track and store email responses?

Question

Currently, in our system, when a user contacts us, we respond through our admin panel. The user then sends an email containing our message and other messages in the conversation.

Then the user must click "Reply to this message", which opens our website, the contact request form and sends the message to the chain (using QueryString to tell which conversation it belongs to).

However, many users like to simply reply to the letter sent to them.

How can I track their response and automatically add it to the same conversation?

We are currently using ASP.NET 3.5, IIS6, and SQL Server 2005, however we will upgrade to ASP.NET 4.0, IIS7, and SQL Server 2008

Thanks Curt

Answer 1

This is not a complete solution (but hey, this is not what this place is for anyway), but this is a general idea:

Indicate the response header in the messages you send (or just use the from address). Then configure a script that periodically reads email messages to this address and inserts them into your database (for viewing). To get the correct streams, you can use the in-reply-to header in the message sent to you. I don’t know by heart how to find the identifier of the mail message you sent, but a little research on your part should show this. (if the worst comes to the worst, you can always send the message to the BCC yourself and read it from there, but there should be simpler ways).

Please note that some people (GMail in particular) refuse to use headers in the reply message due to the way people use email (although I don’t think this will be a big problem when you describe) and use topics to create threads. This may be an easier solution, although it may be less reliable in your case.