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Marketing Cloud Engagement | Tracking Aliases in Emails

Julkaisupäivä: Jul 30, 2026
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Set the alias attribute on the <a> tag in your email HTML to label a link for tracking in Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE). This article describes tracking aliases and where to view tracking data for each alias.

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What Is a Tracking Alias?

Set the alias attribute on the <a> tag in the outbound email HTML to assign a custom identifier (alias) to a link property in MCE.

The system uses link attributes containing the alias attribute for internal identification when it sends the email, then removes them from the recipient's email body. In other words, the alias is a sender-side administrative setting; recipients never see it.

Note: This feature applies only to HTML emails — it is not available for plain-text emails.

Reference: Link Tracking (Salesforce Help)

Check Click Data for Each Tracking Alias

Check in Email Studio

  1. Access Email Studio and open the sent email.
  2. Select the Tracking tab.
  3. Open the Click Activity tab.
  4. View the list of links; each row shows its tracking alias.
    • Links with an alias set: the alias name displays.
    • Links without an alias: the link's URL displays as-is.
Check in Journey Builder

  1. Open the journey containing the email in Journey Builder.
  2. Select the email activity and open Email Analysis for details.
  3. Open the Click Activity tab.
  4. As in Email Studio, the tracking alias for each link displays.
Check Tracking Aliases via Data Extraction

Check via Tracking Extract (Extract Clicks):

Run an Extract Clicks tracking extract in Automation Studio's Data Extract activity to include an Alias field in the extracted data. For links without an alias set, the Alias field contains the URL instead.

Reference: Tracking Extract

Check in the Click Data View:

Run the following Click Data View query from a SQL query activity in Automation Studio.

  • The LinkName column contains the tracking alias.
  • For links without an alias set, LinkName contains the URL instead.

Reference: Data View: Click

FAQ

Q. Does the tracking alias display to recipients?
A. No. MCE uses the alias attribute for internal link identification when it sends the email, then removes it from the email body recipients receive.

Q. Does the link title affect tracking?
A. No. The link title corresponds to the title attribute of the <a> tag and only affects the tooltip that displays when a user hovers over the link — it's independent of tracking.

Q. Can I set multiple aliases on the same URL?
A. Yes. Assign a different alias to each link that points to the same URL, so you can identify separately which position in the email generated each click. If you don't set an alias, MCE aggregates clicks on the same URL together.

Reference: Click Activity reports contain unexpected percentages or click counts

Q. Can I use an alias in plain-text emails?
A. No. Tracking aliases are an HTML-email-only feature. Plain-text emails can't use the <a> tag, so there's no way to set the alias attribute.

Q. If I put the same URL in multiple places in a plain-text email, how does MCE aggregate the clicks?
A. The Click Activity Report aggregates them as a single link. Because plain-text emails write out the URL as-is in the body, you can't assign separate aliases to the same URL — even if it appears in multiple places, tracking data shows it as one aggregated link.
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Salesforce Help | Article