Text Version Email Tracking

[lhan]

Hello Marketo Community,

I've been researching on the topic of text version email tracking and found that in order to have your links tracked in your text version email, the url needs to be surrounded by [[ and ]] like this: [[www.domain.com/path/page.html]], see this guide on the experience league. I have two follow-up questions on this I'm hoping to get an answer from anyone who had experience with this:

1. As long as it's formatted correctly, that link will show up in my Email link performance report?
2. If so, and if the URL is the same as in my HTML version, how do I know if it's a text version click? If I add an indicator such as "_text " at the end of my cmp code string will it show up in the Email link performance report? Has anyone tried this?

Thank you in advance!

Lhan

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

As long as it's formatted correctly, that link will show up in my Email link performance report?

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Of course. What use would it be otherwise?

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If so, and if the URL is the same as in my HTML version, how do I know if it's a text version click? If I add an indicator such as "_text " at the end of my cmp code string will it show up in the Email link performance report? Has anyone tried this?

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Don’t know what you mean by “code string” but the utm_content query param is proper to use for different links in the same email. You can also take advantage of Marketo’s built-in support for the <a id> attribute. Text links have no id.

[reetusharmaGrz1]

Hi @lhan 

Yes, your understanding is correct—wrapping the URL in [[ ]] enables tracking for links in the text version of your Marketo email. As for your follow-up questions:

Also try with <[[]]>

Will the link appear in the Email Link Performance report?  -  Yes, as long as the URL is properly formatted and tracked, clicks from both the HTML and text versions will be included in the Email Link Performance report. However, by default, Marketo doesn’t differentiate between clicks from the HTML and text versions. It simply tracks the overall performance of the link.

How can you distinguish text version clicks? - A common workaround is to add an indicator like "?utm_content=text_version" to the end of your URL (e.g., www.domain.com/path/page.html?utm_content=text_version). By modifying the URL, you create a separate entry in the Email Link Performance report for the text version. This method allows you to track text version clicks separately from HTML clicks, as they will be recorded as distinct links in the report.

Note : The mktNoTok class functionality does not work with trackable links in text emails. Only for HTML emails.

Thanks

Reetu

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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However, by default, Marketo doesn’t differentiate between clicks from the HTML and text versions. It simply tracks the overall performance of the link.

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This is true for the canned Email Link Performance Report.

It is, however, not true in terms of Smart Lists using Click Email, which can easily differentiate the two, as I noted above.

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but be sure the added parameter doesn’t interfere with your URL functionality or analytics tracking systems. It’s also a good idea to confirm that your web analytics tools can handle the extra parameters without any issues.

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You should use utm_content, not a random empty query param. That’s what that standard UTM param is for!

(Also any web analytics tool that can’t handle additional query params is broken, since params can be added by any source.)

[lhan]

Thank you Sanford!

[lhan]

Got it. Thank you for the explanation! Will use the ?utm_content=text_version next time and see if my text version emails are actually getting clicks! Thanks!