All marketers wish to measure the impact their campaigns have, i.e.: find a means to quantify their success. Proper analysis of opens and clicks from outbound communications can show the effect upon the revenue bottom line - so we need some means of collecting this data.
When someone clicks an untracked link in your email pointing to https://website.org/product.html, the destination can report information about this click, such as:
- What day/time was it clicked
- What mail client (or browser) is being used
However, further information about the click can't be obtained from that untracked link alone, for example:
- Who clicked it?
- What was the email that contained the link?
- Which one of the numerous links within that email was actually clicked?
Tracking works by adding parameters to the link which - when clicked - still has the same outcome (lands at the same target) yet provides further information about the visit. Some examples may read:
- https://website.org/product.html?mail=sale
- https://website.org/product.html?mail=promotion
- https://website.org/product.html?mail=circular
For tracking to be effective, two objectives must be met:
-
In the SOURCE content: we add parameters to links in emails/mobile messages/pages/etc
-
At the TARGET website: some processing will interpret that additional information
Hence two things are needed:
-
Some means of adding parameters (client-side) to links in outgoing communications
-
Some means of interpreting those parameters at the target end (server-side)
Adding Parameters
Suppose on website.org, the receiving webserver has some means of extracting this additional tracking information, and has already defined the information to be supplied. How then do we add the required parameters against links in Engage?
Three steps are needed:
- Set up a Tracker that appends parameters to links
- Add that tracker to the organization
- Add values that will append to the links
