Link tracking provides you with a detailed view of how customers are engaging with your email templates. Visit link tracking within any live or completed campaign to understand how customers are interacting with template elements and improve email performance going forward.
Access link tracking for any ongoing or completed campaign by navigating to Campaigns, then click the link tracking tab at the top of the page. Link tracking is available for both automated and one-time campaigns once the campaign has initialized. Mobile and desktop clicks can also be exported from the link tracking tab by clicking Export to Excel.
Campaigns built through Experience Designer or emails with an A/B variation also have the ability to view link tracking per campaign.
Experience Designer breaks down analytics for all campaigns in the journey. Navigate between campaigns in Experience Designer by selecting a campaign on the left-hand side. To view the different email variations, select the campaign, then select a variation from the drop-down menu.
⚠️ Warning: If the template preview is not rendering in the campaign summary page, link tracking will not function.
Even if proofs render and the campaign sends as expected, link tracking is tied to the template preview. For the entire time the template is invalid, link tracking will be blocked and unrecoverable.
Ensure the template preview renders before setting the campaign live.
BEFORE GETTING STARTED
Bluecore automatically supports showing individual link tracking for newly created email campaigns.
To view link tracking data for campaigns using Smart Content, follow the below steps.
Navigate to the applicable campaign with Smart Content.
Resave each existing block of Smart Content.
Save and Republish the campaign.
UNDERSTANDING LINK TRACKING METRICS
After you’ve selected a campaign, click the link tracking tab to view link analytics.
Timeframe: The time window that the data reflects.
Desktop/Mobile View: Toggle between the desktop and mobile view of the email. The click numbers reflect the device selected.
Total Clicks: The number of clicks from the device selected.
Total Unique Clicks: The aggregated number of how many times all links were clicked in this selected device by individuals. Duplicate/multiple clicks are not attributed here.
CLICKS VS. UNIQUE CLICKS
Each link is given a number on the left-hand side of the screen. The number coincides with a visual representation of where it is located in the email.
Link Name: This is populated from the link structure, between the domain and the tracking parameters. For example, http://www.bluecore.com/womens is displayed as /womens.
Clicks: The number of clicks per link of the identified section.
Unique Clicks: An aggregated total of how many times the link is clicked by individual users.
ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS
Historical Link Tracking: Link tracking data that dates back and provides a snapshot of the email content performance since it got launched and broken out by each send and subsequent template updates. It also provides the aggregated view of both mobile and desktop analytics.
Smart Content: Click the Smart Content link on the left-hand side to view a breakdown of all Smart Content link tracking metrics available for the previously configured blocks. Each block of Smart Content displays a rolled-up view of total desktop clicks and total unique desktop clicks. Drill deeper into a Smart Content block to view a breakdown of each Smart Content option in the email.
NOTE: Smart Content data in link tracking was previously unavailable. To view this data, resave each Smart Content widget within the applicable campaign and republish these campaigns after July 2021.
Dynamic elements: Dynamic product blocks and smart content are populated per individual. Any clicks attributed to dynamic product blocks are aggregated in this click map.
Custom code blocks: At this time, click information is aggregated for this section. This is represented by the link name of Custom Code Block.
FAQ
Q: Does link tracking support A/B testing?
A: Yes, if the campaign has an A/B test, select the variant from the drop-down menu.
Q: Will link tracking automatically be added in all upcoming sends or is this something I need to manually enable for each send?
A: Link tracking is included for all newly created campaigns. Any campaigns created before you received access to this feature needs to be republished to enable link tracking.
Q: Do Bluecore report on mobile clicks?
A: Yes, simply toggle to mobile clicks from the desktop default.
Q: How do I split out link tracking within a custom code block?
A: Recreate the global widget or template element without custom code blocks. All links within custom code blocks are aggregated and tracked together as one.
Q: If a global widget is updated, does this activity reset link tracking for any template that uses it?
A: If an update is made to a global widget, you can expand the accordion view on the left side of the screen, where each row will have a version of the global widget that will show the date range and count percentages for that version. Further, clicking on the popup icon opens the modal with the details for the selected version broken down by each link within it.
Q: Will link tracking reset in a one-time campaign after it has been sent out, if the global widget that was used in that campaign was updated?
A: Yes, if there are changes to the global widget in a one-time campaign upon expanding the accordion view on the left side, each version row of the global widget will show the date range and count percentages of that version.
Q: Will updates to campaigns that have Smart Content that leverages a global widget that has been updated, reset the historical link tracking?
A: Yes, if there are changes to a global widget it will create a new version row of the global widget which will show the date range and count percentages.
Q: Could link tracking utm tags be impacting my Google Analytics?
A: Bluecore adds a parameter to your links to support link tracking, but can be ignored in Google Analytics.
Q: Will link tracking tell me which product was clicked on within the dynamic product recommendations block?
A: No, link tracking will only tell you that the dynamic product block was clicked on not which specific product.
Q: What happens when a portion of the email is removed in an update?
A: With Historical Link Tracking you will not lose the tracking data for the removed item, instead a version of the campaign will be created and can be referenced based on the date of the change.
