Tracking Clicks in Emails

Erik Leaver

Hi,

 

I frequently use the same action or donation URL multiple times inside of an email. I'd like to know which links are being clicked on the most inside the delivered email for optimization. For instance, if you have a call out box in a sidebar with a headline, photo and a "take action button", I want to know if we get more clicks from the headline, the photo, or the take action button.

 

Another use scenario would be to have a ps below the signature. I know ps's work in direct mail, but how do they perform for us in email. I'd like to know!

 

I suppose one option would be to clone the donation / action page a bunch of times. But since there are unique urls that are generated from Luminate/Convio I'd think there must be a way to track this. But support says there isn't. So turning to the community to see how folks are managing this.

Noah Cooper

This is possible if you append additional arguments to each link in order to make them unique. For example, https://secure2.convio.net/shortname/site/Donation2?df_id=1234&1234.donation=form1&link=headline vs. https://secure2.convio.net/shortname/site/Donation2?df_id=1234&1234.donation=form1&link=photo vs. https://secure2.convio.net/shortname/site/Donation2?df_id=1234&1234.donation=form1&link=takeaction. With this approach, you'll effectively have three different "pages" in your clickthrough reports, even though ultimately each URL leads to the same donation form.

Steve Cooper 2

Hi, Erik!

I haven't actually done this myself, but I think this approach should work. It is a little messy, so if anyone else has worked out a better way to track things like this, please speak up!

 

First, when you're building in your links to your donation forms/action alerts, you can add additional arguments that won't actually change how people use those modules, but that will give you markers to track how people are interacting with your content. These are called "source codes" and "sub-source codes". 

 

The link to your main donation form is "https://secure3.convio.net/sdc/site/Donation2?&df_id=1553". See how there's that &df_id bit at the end? That's an additional argument that, in this case, tells the server exactly which donation form to serve up. Source codes and sub-source codes are also arguments. You can add them to the end of that link as you're building out your e-mails.

 

For example, if I wanted to link to that form from a "Donate Now" button in an e-mail I was putting together, I could have a link that looked like "https://secure3.convio.net/sdc/site/Donation2?&df_id=1553&s_src=DonateNowButton". That would associate any clicks to that URL with the "DonateNowButton" source code.

 

The same basic idea applies with sub-source codes. Just use "&s_subsrc=Sub-SourceName" as your argument.

 

For more information, the documentation you'll need is here: http://help.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=Admin_Origin_SourceSubSource_Understanding#special. Just know that it's written with the expectation that you'll be using the WYSIWYG, but the same principles apply.

 

That's how you make the data trackable. Here's how you report on it.

 

In the email module, under the reports tab, you have the option of running a clickthrough summary report.  It will tell you how many times a link has been clicked in an e-mail. By using source codes and sub-source codes, you've made the links different enough for the system to track on the cilckthrough summary report.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Steve

 

 

Steve Cooper 2

Steve Cooper:

Hi, Erik!

I haven't actually done this myself, but I think this approach should work. It is a little messy, so if anyone else has worked out a better way to track things like this, please speak up!

 

First, when you're building in your links to your donation forms/action alerts, you can add additional arguments that won't actually change how people use those modules, but that will give you markers to track how people are interacting with your content. These are called "source codes" and "sub-source codes". 

 

The link to your main donation form is "https://secure3.convio.net/sdc/site/Donation2?&df_id=1553". See how there's that &df_id bit at the end? That's an additional argument that, in this case, tells the server exactly which donation form to serve up. Source codes and sub-source codes are also arguments. You can add them to the end of that link as you're building out your e-mails.

 

For example, if I wanted to link to that form from a "Donate Now" button in an e-mail I was putting together, I could have a link that looked like "https://secure3.convio.net/sdc/site/Donation2?&df_id=1553&s_src=DonateNowButton". That would associate any clicks to that URL with the "DonateNowButton" source code.

 

The same basic idea applies with sub-source codes. Just use "&s_subsrc=Sub-SourceName" as your argument.

 

For more information, the documentation you'll need is here: http://help.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=Admin_Origin_SourceSubSource_Understanding#special. Just know that it's written with the expectation that you'll be using the WYSIWYG, but the same principles apply.

 

That's how you make the data trackable. Here's how you report on it.

 

In the email module, under the reports tab, you have the option of running a clickthrough summary report.  It will tell you how many times a link has been clicked in an e-mail. By using source codes and sub-source codes, you've made the links different enough for the system to track on the cilckthrough summary report.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Steve

 

 

Oops. Looks like we cross-posted. Noah's solution is a little more elegant. I say go with that one.

 

Nice tip, Noah! I didn't know about the "link" argument.

Noah Cooper

Steve Cooper:

Oops. Looks like we cross-posted. Noah's solution is a little more elegant. I say go with that one.

 

Nice tip, Noah! I didn't know about the "link" argument.

I just used "link" as an arbitrary URL argument, but your approach is better in that it uses source and sub-source codes, which means that not only will each link show up as unique in clickthrough details, but the source and sub-source codes will also be included on any transactions made as a result as well.

Erik Leaver

Noah Cooper:

I just used "link" as an arbitrary URL argument, but your approach is better in that it uses source and sub-source codes, which means that not only will each link show up as unique in clickthrough details, but the source and sub-source codes will also be included on any transactions made as a result as well.

In these emails I'm already using sub-source codes (case scenario: a 3part email series with each part having multiple segments, so using things like &s_src=burma-activists1, &s_src=burma-fulllist1; &s_src=burma-activists2, &s_src=burma-fulllist2, etc)

 

So if I can use "link" that will work better.

Mike Infranco

We do this via Google Analytics. It has the benefit of being a different URL in email reports, and if you are doing GA goals tracking, you can filter/pivot by which version of the base URL was used.

 

 

Szymon Zaleski 2

Do you happen to know if it's possible to get that information from Luminate Online Web Services?

I'm looking at available types - EmailCampaign, EmailMessage, EmailDelivery and EmailRecipient and while I can retrieve open count and click count, I don't see the clickthrough URL anywhere

Alex Russell

Szymon Zaleski:

Do you happen to know if it's possible to get that information from Luminate Online Web Services?

I'm looking at available types - EmailCampaign, EmailMessage, EmailDelivery and EmailRecipient and while I can retrieve open count and click count, I don't see the clickthrough URL anywhere

Hi Szymon, I think you're looking for the email reports tab. If you go Email, select the email campaign containing the message you want information on, and click on the Reports tab, you can download a Clickthrough Details Report or a Clickthrough Summary Report. The details report will show you what every person that took action in your email clicked on, and the summary report will tell you how many times each link was clicked.

Szymon Zaleski 2

Hi Alex, 

Thank you for your response. Yes, we are currently running these reports (Campaign Open Report and Clickthrough Details Report) on weekly basis with some additional post-processing to make them interactive for our analysts. I am trying to save the time and repetitive tasks by automating them based on the information retrieved from LO using the Web Services and while most of the fields can be replicated, I can't find the actual clickthrough URL addresses in Web Services. They are obviously stored in the Luminate database as they show up on canned Clickthrough Details Report, they just might not be available through the automation. 

Alex Russell

Szymon Zaleski:

Hi Alex, 

Thank you for your response. Yes, we are currently running these reports (Campaign Open Report and Clickthrough Details Report) on weekly basis with some additional post-processing to make them interactive for our analysts. I am trying to save the time and repetitive tasks by automating them based on the information retrieved from LO using the Web Services and while most of the fields can be replicated, I can't find the actual clickthrough URL addresses in Web Services. They are obviously stored in the Luminate database as they show up on canned Clickthrough Details Report, they just might not be available through the automation. 

Ah, got it! I misunderstood, sorry. It is a little frustrating that most of the non-Report Writer reports can't be automated. If you're using the source and subsource codes, I think you can retrieve those from an interaction report. Unfortunately I believe that's really the only way, and it doesn't give you complete data - it just shows that performed an action on your site, and doesn't show if people click on a link just to look. Hopefully someone else has more information if it is possible.