Clickthrough Tracking, Opens and HTML Detection

Clickthrough Tracking, Opens, and HTML Detection

ListManager offers several ways for you to track the success of your mailing using clickthrough tracking URLs, open rate tracking and detect-HTML tags.

Note: Tracking URLs may be 255 characters or fewer.

Clickthrough Tracking URLs

The easiest way to include a clickthrough tracking URL is to create content, and use the Insert URL feature. See Content: Insert URL for more information.

If you would like to insert your URL manually, use the following format:

%%track "http://your.destination.com" -name "optionalname" -group "optionalgroup"%%

The -name and -group are optional, but may be helpful when viewing your tracking results in Reports: Mailing Reports: Tracking Statistics.

When sent, the tracking tag will be converted by ListManager into something that looks like this:

http://your.listmanager.server/t/51/3/1/2

When the recipient clicks on this tag, they will be redirected to the URL you specified when creating the clickthrough tracking URL. Information about clickthroughs can then be found in Reports: Mailing Reports: Tracking Statistics.

Tracking Without Cookies

Note that the [memberid], [memberidchar], [messageid], [urlid], [groupid], and [urltext] of a clickthrough can be identified without giving a user a cookie by inserting certain parameters into the URL. Curly brackets {} must be used around the tracked URL in order to accomplish this. The curly brackets {} must be added after the URL has been inserted into the document. Adding them before, in the URL dialogue window, will result in a nonclickable URL.

Adding the curly brackets {} causes the ID to be stored as part of the URL. If a Web site receives one of these ID's, it can keep track of it, and pass it to ListManager in Action Tags, without the use of cookies. Use the following format:

%%track {http://your.destination.com?x=[memberid]&y=[messageid]}%%

The clickthrough logic will automatically replace the [memberid], [messageid], [urlid], [groupid], or [urltext] with the real ID in the destination URL, so the web server page can have these variables.

Using HTML to Disguise a Tracking URL

A tracking URL contains the URL for your ListManager server. If you are sending text messages, this URL cannot be disguised. However, if you are sending an HTML message, you may disguise this URL using HTML.

For example:

<A HREF="%%track "http://www.lyris.com" -name "homepage" -group "top of page"%%">click here</A>

The tracking URL will be triggered when someone clicks on the words "click here".

An image may be made clickable as well:

This tracking URL will be triggered when someone clicks on the image.

Tracking Rich Media

The syntax for tracking rich media is much like that for tracking URLs. For video:

%%track "http://example.com/video.avi" -name "video"%%

For audio:

%%track "http://example.com/audio.wav" -name "audio"%%

Detect Opens

Detecting opens of email messages can only be done in HTML or multipart-alternative messages with an HTML section. The easiest way to detect opens is to select Detect Opens in Mailings: New Mailings: Tracking. Or, you may insert the following tag into your HTML message:

%%detect_open%%

Detect HTML

Detecting HTML capability of recipients can only be done in HTML or multipart-alternative messages with an HTML section. The easiest way to detect HTML is to select Detect HTML Capability in Mailings: New Mailings: Tracking. Or, you may insert the following tag into your HTML message:

%%detect_html%%

Detect Both Opens and HTML

Detecting opens and HTML capability of recipients can only be done in HTML or multipart-alternative messages with an HTML section. The easiest way to detect opens and HTML capability is to select Detect Opens and Detect HTML Capability in Mailings: New Mailings: Tracking. Or, you may insert the following tag into your HTML message:

%%detect_both%%

Note that when using multiple detect tags within the same email message, some tags may not work the way you expect them to. The detect_both tag essentially has the same functionality as the detect_open and detect_html tags put together. Therefore, to avoid mistakes where detect_both and one or both of detect_open and/or detect_html are used in the same message, ListManager keeps track of what is being tracked for a particular message and if a redundant tag is inserted, it is either ignored or, in the case of detect_both, modified such that you only get a single open and html tracking image in each message. The same applies to messages where detect_html or detect_open is used multiple times. The first one is kept, and the rest ignored.