Add links and track messages

Use Journey Optimizer to add links to your content and track the messages sent in order to monitor the behavior of your recipients.

Enable tracking

You can enable tracking at the email message level by checking the Email opens and/or Click on email options when creating your message inside a journey or a campaign.

This will let you track the behavior of your recipients through:

• Email opens: Messages that have been opened.
• Click on email: Clicks on links in an email.

Insert links

When designing a message, you can add links to your content.

To insert links into your email content, follow the steps below:

1. Select an element and click Insert link from the contextual toolbar.

   

2. Choose the type of link you want to create:

   • External link: Insert a link to an external URL.

   • Landing page: Insert a link to a landing page. Learn more

   • One click Opt-out: Insert a link to enable users to quickly unsubscribe from your communications without the need to confirm opting out. Learn more.

   • External Opt-in/Subscription: Insert a link to accept receiving communications from your brand.

   • External Opt-out/Unsubscription: Insert a link to unsubscribe from receiving communications from your brand. Learn more on opt-out management in this section.

   • Mirror page: Add a link to display the email content in a web browser. Learn more

3. Enter the desired URL in the corresponding field, or select a landing page, and define the link settings and styles. Learn more

   NOTE

   For interpreting URLs, Journey Optimizer complies with the URI syntax (RFC 3986 standard), which disables some special international characters in URLs. When trying to send the proof or email, if you are returned an error involving a URL added to your content, you can URL encode the string as a workaround.

4. You can personalize your links. Learn more

5. Save your changes.

6. Once the link is created, you can still modify it from the Settings and Styles panes on the right.

   

Adjust links

You can make adjustments to your links using the Settings and Styles panes on the right. You can underline a link, edit its color and select its target.

1. In a Text component where a link is inserted, select your link.

2. From the Settings tab, choose how your audience will be redirected with the Target drop-down:

   • None: opens the link in the same frame as it was clicked (default).
   • Blank: opens the link in a new window or tab.
   • Self: opens the link in the same frame as it was clicked.
   • Parent: opens the link in the parent frame.
   • Top: opens the link in the full body of the window.

   

3. Check Underline link to underline the label text of your link.

   

4. To change the color of your link, click on Link color from the Styles tab.

   

5. Save your changes.

Link to a mirror page

The mirror page is an HTML page accessible online via a web browser. Its content is identical to the content of your email.

To add a link to a mirror page in your email, insert a link and select Mirror page as the type of link.

The mirror page is automatically created.

Once the email is sent, when the recipients click the mirror page link, the content of the email is displayed in their default web browser.

The retention period for a mirror page is 60 days. After that delay, the mirror page will no longer be available.

Manage tracking

The Email Designer allows you to manage the tracked URLs, such as editing the tracking type for each link.

1. Click the Links icon from the left pane to display the list of all the URLs of your content that will be tracked.

   This list enables you to have a centralized view and to locate each URL in the email content.

2. To edit a link, click the corresponding pencil icon.

3. You can modify the Tracking Type if needed:

   

   For each tracked URL, you can set the tracking mode to one of these values:

   • Tracked: Activates tracking on this URL.
   • Opt out: Considers this URL as an opt-out or unsubscription URL.
   • Mirror page: Considers this URL is a mirror page URL.
   • Never: Never activates tracking of this URL.

Reporting on openings and clicks is available in the Live report and in the Global report.

URL tracking

Usually URL tracking is managed at the surface level, but profile attributes are not supported. Currently the only way to do it is to personalize URLs in the email designer.

To add personalized URL tracking parameters to your links, follow the steps below.

1. Select a link and click Insert link from the contextual toolbar.

2. Select the personalization icon. It is only available for these types of links: External link, Unsubscription link and Opt-Out.

   

3. Add the URL tracking parameter and select the profile attribute of your choice from the expression editor.

   

4. Save your changes.

5. Repeat the steps above for each link you want to add this tracking parameter to.

Now when the email is sent out, this parameter will be automatically appended to the end of the URL. You can then capture this parameter in web analytics tools or in performance reports.