How link tracking affects email deliverability

Tracking click-throughs is a very useful feature when it comes to analyzing the effectiveness of your trigger emails. After all, the click-through-rate (CTR) is the only way to understand whether the email you’ve written is driving conversions.

Nevertheless, it’s not the click-through rate that is of paramount importance for a successful mailing, but the deliverability of the emails. And it can be affected by any little thing, including tracking click-through rates. Keeping this in mind, we gave you complete freedom in this matter: to follow up or not – it’s up to you. But first, let’s understand why link tracking can have a negative impact on deliverability.

How links are tracked

To track transitions, the tracking service wraps the original link with its own links, thus changing it. When the recipient clicks on the link, they are redirected to a site that acts as an internet gateway, and only then to where your link led. For the recipient such a substitution remains unnoticeable, because it does not affect the speed, and the page address changes to the one you provided in a matter of seconds. This fast redirection is enough for the system to trace the link.

Types of links in emails

There are two types of links in emails:

• direct link,
• Anchor link.

You can track jumps in both cases. But direct links are still best avoided. And here’s why.
When link tracking has a negative impact on deliverability

This is a trick a lot of spammers and scammers pull: insert a link that leads to the wrong place.

Imagine if you received an email with a link, but clicking on it takes you to a site asking for a donation. To avoid frustrating users and to protect them from scammers, mailers and spam filters keep a close eye on the links in emails. They protect users by filtering emails and sending emails with suspicious links to the spam folder.

How do you know if link clicks are being monitored?

Hover your cursor over a link in the email and look in the lower left corner of your browser. If the link that appears there is identical to the one in the email, journeys through it will not be monitored. If it’s not the same link, the clicks will be tracked.

How you can track link clicks so that they don’t decrease deliverability

The answer is anchor links. To be aware of link conversions and not sacrifice the deliverability figures, attach the link to the text. That way there will be no explicit links in the body of the email, but just text that leads to the site of your choice.

This will help bypass filters, and the deliverability of the newsletter will either not suffer at all or only slightly.