Link Tracking / URL / Program Tokens

Link Tracking / URL / Program Tokens

From thread https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000PbKHAA0
I need to add one thing to what Adam said about URL tokens. Do NOT include the http:// in the token. Else click won't be registered in your email performance reports. So use a token like "marketo.yourdomain.com/landingpage.html" and in the email use "http://{{my.landingpageurltoken}}".

I admit I knew there was something about the link tokening that wasn't working properly, but it didn't have much of an impact. Then I was reminded by Diederik what the specific impact was. I checked & my click rates on emails which deliver link tokens are much lower than the others. I think this effects 250 programs in my instance. 

I would go through each of the ~250 program and change every link & token to be as D describes above. It'd take me 8 hours, but if it needs to get done it needs to get done. It's a clever work around for this problem. But I'm convinced that my colleagues won't remember to remove the HTTP from the token, which will break the URL. So I'd rather see this improvement come out of Marketo instead. 

Using tokens for links is a vital part of the way Planon & I'm sure many other companies use programs. I'd prefer you to consider this a bug fix & reprioritize the way tokens are resolved such that link tracking/tokening is placed after the link is inserted. If that's too hard, perhaps creating a new type of token to pull over, URL token, would be easier to execute. I know it'd be easier for me to switch out a single token in a ton of programs, rather than 2-4 links in every email.

I'd love to see this fixed so that my reporting is accurate.
10 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable
Any news on this matter? We're new to Marketo and have just set up hundreds of emails placing the "http://..."-part in the token. We didn't notice links weren't tracked because in test emails the redirection works fine. Only if sent through a campaign links are not redirected, and thus not tracked. 

I second Adam in considering this a bug.
Anonymous
Not applicable

I don't believe this has been solved. We also are seeing the same issue, not being able to track these links. One thing I was told is that you can use a Text Only email, and surround the link with brackets (e.g.: [[http://www.xyz.com]] and that will be tracked. This will also work for [[http://{{my.landingpageurltoken}}]]

Anonymous
Not applicable

This seems like an example of an issue that doesn't get the attention it needs because there is a work-around. I would love to just move my protocol strings into the bodies of my emails and leave the rest of the link body inside the tokens. The problem is that sometimes the protocol is http:// and other times it's https://, so the portion that remains static has to be changed periodically, which defeats the purpose of using a token. It's all well and good for me to realize this, but try explaining it to my client.

Please, please, please, Marketo. I've been dealing with this bug for two years now. I'm so tired of it. Is there anything you can do?

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

I think this would be better and safer if, instead of using a text token as a URL, we would benefit from a real URL token type and strong support for URL type fields, as it was in the original idea ( ) and here

-Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

Grégoire Michel​ - The link to the idea around "URL Token type in Programs" seems to no longer be working. I successfully clicked the link and voted up the idea yesterday, then routed to our team to ask them to do the same, and somewhere in a timeframe of about 30 minutes, the link stopped working! Any ideas how that could happen, or how to troubleshoot?

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Hi Robin,

I am experiencing the same issue with that link that displays an "unexpected error"

Janet Dulsky , can you help?

-Greg

Janet_Dulsky
Marketo Employee

Grégoire Michel​ and Robin Magyar - Freeman Production​, I have submitted the issue to Jive as a ticket. Will update you as soon as I know something.

Thanks, Janet

Janet_Dulsky
Marketo Employee

Grégoire Michel​ and Robin Magyar - Freeman Production​, the bug on this idea has been fixed by Jive and it is now visible. Apparently, the same people voted multiple times on this idea which is what caused the error. Thanks, again, for pointing it out so we could get it fixed.

Janet

Mark_Farnell
Level 5

Earlier in the thread it's mentioned that this isn't getting prioritized as there is a workaround.  We follow the workaround, but it does rely on users remembering to do it.  Therefore Marketo should fix this. 

kh-lschutte
Community Manager
Status changed to: Open Ideas