Tracking links in emails: redirects, utm's, web identification... and sometimes problems!

Originally, there was no tracking in emails, so they wandered around naked like worms on the surface of the earth. Then redirection came along, and the links in your newsletters became impure, their souls compromised, but hey, it's awfully convenient to know who's clicking on what in our emails, so we can adjust our marketing accordingly. emailing strategy ! In this article, we'll look at exactly how link tracking works, the opportunities and risks involved.

Note: In this article, we only talk about email link tracking. We've written another article to help you understand how email opening tracking.

How does it work?

Rewriting your email links

All modern email campaign management allow you to find out who clicked on what. Simply at the moment of sending, the router will automatically replace all the links in your e-mails with an alternative link. When your recipients click on a link, they will first go to the tracking link, which will count the click and then redirect to the final destination.

Most of the time, this technique will tell you :

• Who clicked?
• On which link?
• In which area of the email (if you have sent the same email several times)
• And possibly other info, such as a link category

The ability to send information to webanalytics

Knowing who clicks on your emails is cool, but knowing how important the email channel is to your sales, conversions and website traffic is even better. So we've added a "tag"! The idea is to transport information from the email to the website.

When we say that, there's a 50/50 chance you're thinking of Google Analytics, and you're right! Although we shouldn't forget the other web analytics solutions on the market, let's take Google Analytics as an example, because even if Matomo has broken through, they're still market leaders.

So, you send out product emails, and smart as you are, you want to track the traffic that passes from these emails to your website (and then you'll discover that some people buy after clicking... on one of your product emails). In the world of Google Analytics, we use UTMs (for the record, UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, Urchin being the company bought by Google in 2005 to give birth to Google Analytics):

• utm_medium = email
• utm_source = invitation
• utm_campaign = live-interactions

We could even make a second example, which we will deliberately make more complex, but it is not obligatory to go that far! Let's say you send out your newsletter, you've done an AB test and you're crazy enough to want to know which link generated which reaction (you don't have to, but if you really want to, it can be automated):

• utm_medium = email
• utm_source = newsletter
• utm_campaign = 20170930_news_edito
• utm_content = version_A
• utm_term = header_image

Overview of using utm's and Google Analytics in your emails

There are 3 utm's that are essential and that you should never omit in your email campaigns:

• utm_medium This is the simplest, since when the medium is email, it will always be indicated as email here. It will give you an overall idea of the share of email in your website's traffic. So you can compare email traffic with display, SEA, social networks... and all the rest.
• utm_source In the source, we'll have a level of categorization of your different types of emails at a very, very macro level. Traditionally, we'd have newsletter, transaction, notification, trigger, promo, loyalty, ... be careful not to enter this dimension directly into utm_medium, in which case you risk being unable to clearly visualize all your email sources. Coming back to utm_source, you shouldn't have anything that isn't "stable" over time. If you want to put a date in a source... it's not a source.
• utm_campaign This is simply the name of your campaign. Ideally, if you have a good naming system, you should simply use the name of your campaign as defined in your email campaign management solution.

We can then make use of other utm's which will be used in a liberal way... as they are not necessarily intended for the uses we will make of them:

• utm_content AB tests: often used for AB tests (different versions of a banner, etc.), we'll often make the same use of it for our emails. This gives us an idea of the results of our AB tests, as close as possible to the conversion and sales generated if there is no link between the email routing solution and the website.
• utm_term utm_term is initially designed to track keywords. In email, it is used for a myriad of different purposes, but the one that may seem the most logical is the positioning of the link within the email (header, main cta, reassurance, ...) or its category when using taxonomy (sport, culture, dresses, ...).

Automation point What's a little less pleasant when it comes to integrating tracking into web analytics links in emails, ... is integrating them. Fortunately, it's possible to automate this tedious task. In this case, there are three possible scenarios: either your email routing software supports the automation of utm's, i.e. your email builderor you'll have to find your own means of automation.

The main idea behind tracking automation should be that within an email, utm_medium, utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_content are the same everywhere, and can therefore be replaced by a variable that will act on all emails at once. They therefore only need to be entered once.. On the other hand, if you want to use utm_term, depending on your router, it may be a little more daunting.

The ability to carry the recipient's identifier on the website

While the first two steps have logically been well mastered over the last few years (well, not always for web analytics), this is a project that can take a long time. Technically, passing a (more or less hashed/encrypted) email recipient ID in a link isn't very complicated. Technically, retrieving this ID from the website, and matching it with visitor navigation (cookies + server logs) isn't very complicated either. However, using this information intelligently... that's a different kettle of fish. Often, this integration involves, in one way or another, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) which can take a long time to see the light of day.

Live from 2022 with de Adding well

Since April 1, 2021, it's been more complicated to keep track of the conversions an email campaign has generated. As explained by Romain Baert, Founder of Adding well (Server-Side Tracking Platform) For every 100 visitors to a website, we can track 40 (after removing those who refuse everything, those who continue without accepting, those who use an add blocker or browse via Firefox or iOS15+).

Click tracking: for what marketing or business uses?

It's not the technology that's important, it's how you intend to use it.

Use of CRM/Email data by the website

• Pre-filling of forms on the website
• Personalization of certain promotions according to different loyalty and attrition scores
• Personalize content based on preferences and purchase history
• ...

Using navigation data in marketing automation scenarios

• Enrichment of product preference scores
• Influence on reactivation scenarios
• Implementation of abandoned cart strategies
• Sales, conversions and revenue feedback in eCRM reports
• Predictive analysis of intentions and projects to trigger specific scenarios
• ...

How do you get there?

There are several ways to achieve this. The simplest is often to choosing a campaign management solution that makes it easy to tag your website (or at least the most strategic pages), but which can also drive the forms and certain content blocks you're going to place on it. In this way, integration is greatly simplified.

The other option, of course, is to go through a CDP in order to centralize and aggregate CRM data, navigation data... and any other data you deem relevant. Finally, you could also integrate your CMS, your eCRM campaign management solution, your web analytics... and many other things besides. The most appropriate path often depends on the legacy you have in your data system.

What are the risks and perils of click tracking?

Without minimizing the advantages of tracking as part of an emailing strategy, there are a few risks to be aware of, and not to be surprised by.

You may have more in mind, but I'm going to focus on three risks.

Risk no. 1: too massive identification due to email forwarding

The best known.

Anyone who forwards his or her e-mail address to a friend may see his or her profile (on a pre-filled form, for example) exposed to a third party. (The same applies, for example, to the practice of auto-login). Forwarding an e-mail may enable the recipient to gain access to someone else's account.

Unfortunately, we all too often see profiles "overwritten" in the database. For example, you receive an invitation to an event, you register, you forward this email to a colleague, who doesn't add a registration, but overwrites yours because he's stuck on your identification.

Here, we've talked about email transfer, but in certain configurations, the same applies to mirror link or landing page sharing. If an ID remains hard-coded in URLs (a case to be absolutely avoided), it will inevitably be shared, and we'll have the same problems as those explained above.

Risk No. 2: Mass redirects

Some brands don't hesitate to implement several successive redirections in order to inform several tracking platforms and possibly advertising solutions that need to count clicks or cookies.

Unfortunately, with each additional redirection comes an additional risk. The risk that the redirection crashes, and that your customer/prospect/lead never arrives at his destination. But there is also a risk from a point of view of deliverabilitysince each redirect will use a different domaint, and you don't want any of them to be blacklisted... that would be a disaster in terms of deliverability.

We must therefore remain very vigilant.

Modern browsers detect redirect loops or too many redirects and inform the user. This can be seen as an attempt to mislead the user as to the final destination of the link. It's all about security.

Risk #3: ethics

If, from a marketing point of view, we see the benefits of tracking, it's important to ask yourself some legal questions (mainly about email opt-in and compliance with cookie legislation). On the other hand, don't hesitate to put yourself in the consumer's shoes. You still have to ask yourself the question: " Don't I become invasive for my customer/prospect/lead? Won't he find it strange that I know so much about him? ".

Have fun 😉