Trackable links in emails Is the WYSIWYG editor the only way to insert them?

[Anonymous]

Is adding a link via the WYSIWYG editor really the only way to insert a trackable link into an email?
 

What about footer links in my email template for example. Is there no way to convert these links into trackable Marketo links which show up in the engagement reports?
Or links which can’t be inserted via the WYSIWYG editor due to special HTML constructs required for a correct display of the email? Inserting them via tokens is no problem. But it’s useless if they are not converted into trackable Marketo links.

To be honest: After working with the email features in Design Studio and email campaigns intensely for the last days, I’m quite disappointed. I’ve never worked with a marketing automation or email marketing system that had so many drawbacks in its email editor and templateing system. (The link tracking is not the only thing which doesn’t work like it’s supposed to be.)

[Anonymous]

Hey Michael, 
Marketo will track any links that are hyperlinked using the HTML <a> tag.

In the WYSIWYG editor, while editing any section of an email, you can click the "HTML" button. This will open a pop-up with the HTML of the section your are editing. You can then manually add the <a> tags to hyperlink the content you want. Once this is done, Marketo will add tracking to the link upon send.

The same goes for Email Templates. As long as the links are hyperlinked via the <a> tag in the HTML, Marketo will track them.

Best,
Will

[Anonymous]

Hi Will,

I just tested this and the results are contrary:

In the test email (a “real” email sent through an email program, not just a preview mail or anything like that) I included three links:

1. a link to a third party website which I included via the WYSIWYG editor.
2. a link to a third party website where the content of the a element’s href attribute was inserted using a token,
3. a link to a third party website which was hard coded in the email template.

Results:

• Link #1 was converted into a marketo link (starting with http://mkto-lon030215.com because I haven’t yet set up our own subdomain) redirecting to the real URL. Clicks on this link show up in the reports.
• Link #2 and link #3 were not converted into Marketo links. Since the original URLs were left untouched and clicks are not gated though Marketo’s tracking redirect function, clicks on these links don’t show up in reports.

Best regards,
Michael

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hey Michael,
One other thing I forgot to mention is that 'http' or 'https' need to be included at the beginning of the URL.

So if {{my.Link}} is used in the link, it will not be tracked (even if http is within the token itself). However, if http://{{my.Link}} is used in a URL, it will be tracked.

If you can confirm that http is at the beggining of the link and the link is still not being tracked, please provide the HTML of this link.

 

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Will,

That token issue has not been documented previously. Can this be fixed so it works properly if the http:// resolves on the token insertion?

[Anonymous]

Hi Will,

That helped. I had the protocoll part of the URL in the tokens itself. I didn’t know that Marketo converts the links before it parses the tokens. So this is easy to avoid.

And regarding the hard coded link: This was my fault, sorry. I missed a mktNoTrack class which I previously set.