How does Marketo click tracking in e-mails work

[Anonymous]

Hello,

we have seen a steep decline in the click-to-open rate (from ~8% to ~2%) since we rearranged the structure of our emailings and included different links to different Marketo landing pages (in fact, 4 links to different landing pages; previously it was 1 landing page). At present, we are trying to identify whether this is due to this new structure or if some clicks are not being tracked by Marketo.

Therefore, please help us understand how Marketo click tracking in emails works and if including links to different landing pages may somehow disturb this.

Many thanks in advance.

Best Regards

Simon

[John_Clark1]

Hi Simon,

When an email is sent from Marketo it is scanned while it's being built, and any link (anything will https:// at the beginning) gets "wrapped" in tracking information.  This information allows Marketo to know who the email is sent to.   It also allows click tracking by redirecting your email links to the branding domain listed in your Admin section before taking the lead to wherever the link leads.  This quick redirect to the tracking server is how clicks get tracked, and it can't happen if the links in your email aren't getting wrapped.

Can you describe what you mean by changing the structure of your emails?

John

[Stijn_Heijthuij]

Minor issue that we've noticed; if you have a token that is a URL (from start to finish) it won't be tracked in the reports. That's why we always break the http:// section out of the {{my.token}} to become http://{{my.token}}

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Simon,

One common trap is to use tokens and set the link URL as being {{my.token}} or {{lead.OtherToken}}. It will not work because, as John stated, Marketo will not see any http:// nor any https://.

So remove the "http://" or "https://" from you token values and set the link URL to "http://{{my.token}}"

Nevertheless, we observe as a tendency on many Marketo instances that the more CTA you have in an email, the less clicks you get. People react better to clear and straightforward emails/CTA than to blurred messages.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot for your quick replies! We indeed wrap the full URL into tokens since we have changed the mailings. As you pointed out, this probably causes the reporting issues, which are responsible for the low CTO.