When conducting email marketing campaigns, you’re inevitably going to want to track how your campaign is performing. A couple of the front-end indicators that have been widely accepted throughout the industry are email opens and emails clicks. And while the KPI (key performance indicator) may be common, how they’re calculated can vary depending on who (i.e. what software) is doing the math.
For instance, you may have noticed that in Braze your numbers may seem a little higher than you expected. Well, did you know that by default Braze captures unsubscribe URL clicks as a “click”? While tracking total clicks can be valuable in campaigns where all clicks contribute to engagement (such as transactional campaigns), the value quickly diminishes when clicks are recorded for disengagement or unsubscribing - which should not align with your intended call-to-action (CTA)…unless you have too many customers and you’re looking to downsize.
Fortunately, Braze offers the flexibility to disable link tracking for individual links in both the Drag and Drop editor and the HTML editor. This can be done by adding specific link attributes to your <a> tag. The attributes required to disable link tracking may vary depending on the email platform associated with your Braze account, such as SendGrid or SparkPost.
SendGrid: clicktracking = "off"
SparkPost: data-msys-clicktrack = "0"
If you are unsure how to make the update, just let us know and we’ll be happy to set you straight.
Disabling link tracking in HTML editor
Update the HTML code for the link that is to be untracked. Place the attribute to disable link tracking in the anchor tag BEFORE the href as shown below for the Braze unsubscribe link:
Sendgrid: <a clicktracking=off href="{{${set_user_to_unsubscribed_url}}}">
Sparkpost <a data-msys-clicktrack =0 href="{{${set_user_to_unsubscribed_url}}}">
Disabling link tracking in the Drag-and-Drop editor
HTML attributes can be applied to links in image, button, or text blocks. While editing your content block the Attributes option will be available.
Click Add New Attributes
Update the Name and Value pair:
SendGrid
Sparkpost
After making these updates, unsubscribe events will continue to be tracked but the click to the unsubscribe page will not be tracked as part of the click-through rate (CTR) for that campaign or canvas message step moving forward.
Conclusion
Being aware of how email clicks are calculated in your email marketing platform is essential for ensuring accurate interpretation of key performance indicators (KPIs) and gaining valuable insights into customer engagement, channel performance, and overall marketing strategy. Additionally, disabling link tracking for specific links can help ensure that your click-through rate (CTR) aligns with your intended call-to-action (CTA) and prevents disengagement or unsubscribing clicks from skewing your campaign's performance metrics.
If you liked this post, then check out our post on how to work with dates in Braze.