Email Newsletters Tracking

[nitesh35103]

Hello,

I am publishing newsletters via email to our subscribers. The newsletter has text content, images and hyperlinks.

Now, I want to track the activities of the subscribers, lets say the clicks on the hyperlinks.

Can someone please advise me, the best way to do this? How to track, which user is clicking on which hyperlink?

Thanks...

[ryanbutler]

If you're using a purchased solution, that should be included in the package. Otherwise, you'll have to build something custom, or post it to your web server and let an analytic script like Google do it for you.

[eval(BadCode)]

You could include a web bug, although I personally frown upon such things.

Example: 1x1 transparent pixel ... with a url like so:
example.com/tr.gif?t=1231660984095470709172309183816916239812

You could include a token in the URL, and process it when they land on your page:

example.com/?page=1231660984095470709172309183816916239812

You could embed a tacking script (google analytics is both pervasive and annoyingly easy to use).

Or serialize the server's request/response headers and store them/data mine them later, and use bogus tokens but keep track of them (they'll have to be unique).

Lots of ways to do it.

Edit:

I believe "constant contact" offers a solution (possibly free, I dunno).

[mike-web-dev]

If you're using a purchased solution, that should be included in the package. Otherwise, you'll have to build something custom, or post it to your web server and let an analytic script like Google do it for you.

I do this everyday as part of my job, it is the best way of doing it if the system you use to send out the emails does not track the links for you.

[nitesh35103]

Many thanks for your suggestion.

I think the idea of including web bug or token in URL string will work for my case.
The URL string will be like,
http://www.mysite.com/page?lid=324&sid=245&uid=2, where lid, sid and uid corresponds to the ids for letter, subscriber and hyperlink.

Can you please provide me some online tutorials or programs with this approach.

Thanks.

[mike-web-dev]

I use online systems for this kind of tracking such as mediaplex. but its not cheap as I use it through my large company which pay for it as a monthly thing.