Link Tracking

Link Wrapping During Send

Note Link tracking doesn't work with VML code and must be wrapped in standard tags to pick up clicks.

Link wrapping converts email content links so that they’re unique to a subscriber, which enables Engagement to track clicks for these links.

1. The system scans message content for link tags.

   • <a href="https://salesforce.com" alias="Salesforce Link" conversion="true">Salesforce</a> 

     Link attributes such as alias and conversion are used to control how Engagement wraps the links. They’re removed, so they aren’t present in the message received.

   • <a href="https://salesforce.com">Salesforce</a>

     To facilitate tracking, a unique identifier is generated, which Engagement associates with the subscriber, job, and link.

   • Example ID: 95ee94c8e1e287fcaa41a7f714c4cf122bfac08cb6e8fcde2d8cbedee75200c4f1b1d1a48e7b54c80d4b4e2484c777ef
2. The original URL is replaced with a new one that routes to Engagement click processors, which contain the unique identifier.
   • The URLs for the Engagement click processors are either the default values, such as cl.exct.net, or branded domains available through Sender Authentication Package.
3. The send service then replaces the link with one that's unique to the subscriber.

   • <a href="https://cl.exct.net/?qs=adfiodsfjoasdjfochvuasio">Salesforce</a>

Note All links go to the root of the click domain with these exceptions:

• Subscription Center (%%subscription_center_url%%) - /subscription_center.aspx
• Profile Center (%%profile_center_url%%) /profile_center.aspx
• Unsubscribe Center (%%unsub_center_url%%) /unsub_center.aspx

Subscriber Inbox Link Redirection Initiated by Subscriber

1. After a subscriber clicks a link, their browser makes an HTTP GET request to the Engagement click server, which contains the unique identifier.
2. The Engagement click server retrieves the applicable user information and logs that the link has been clicked. The retrieval can occur many times so that you can see when and how often each user opened the link. The click server responds to the browser with an HTTP redirect that contains the URL for the destination URL.

   • HTTP/1.1 302 Found Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Location: https://www.example.com Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 18:23:40 GMT Connection: close 

     

     Note To update the link after sending an email, use the Update Job Links option available in Tracking.
3. The browser displays the destination URL to the subscriber.

Dynamic Links

Engagement supports dynamic links by using personalization strings or AMPscript. These links can use values from an attribute, data extension field, or variable to provide the dynamic data.

If the protocol and domain are included in the href value in the static message content, you can use personalization strings with attributes.

<a href="https://www.example.com/?campaign=%%CampaignCode%%%">My Link</a>

If the protocol and domain are coming from a dynamic source such as an attribute, data extension field, or variable, the RedirectTo AMPscript function is required so that it can be identified as a link.

Example using function:

%%[set @myvariable = concat('https://www.example.com/?campaign=', CampaignCode)]%%
    <a href="%%=RedirectTo(@myvariable)=%%">My Link</a>