E-mail Standards: E-mail Tracking

Tracking message opens and clickthroughs

Certain e-mail software allows for the tracking of e-mail opens and clickthroughs (when a tracked link is followed). The University's mass e-mail distribution system, Lyris ListManager, allows for this type of tracking. The methods used for open and clickthrough tracking are common to most mass e-mail systems.

E-mail Privacy Policy—E-mail open and clickthrough tracking allows for collection of both aggregate and personally identifiable information, such as the number of recipients who clicked on a specific link, or whether a particular recipient clicked a link at all. When e-mail tracking is used, a link to a privacy policy in the e-mail is recommended, especially for communications to external audiences.

Until there is a standard policy or statement for e-mail privacy at the University, you should provide a simple, plain-language statement that includes the information being collected and how it is being used.

Open tracking

Due to its implementation, open tracking does not provide a reliable measure of how many recipients open a message. Open tracking relies on a small, transparent image that is embedded in the HTML part of a message. A recipient must not only view the e-mail in HTML, they must also choose to load images, if presented with that option, to be counted as an open. Because of this, the number of counted opens will always be lower than the number of actual opens.

Clickthrough tracking

Clickthrough tracking, or link tracking, works by taking a destination URL, e.g., http://www.umn.edu, and rewriting it so that it first directs a user through a system where their action is recorded, then redirects the user to the intended destination. A tracked link, using Lyris ListManager, might look like http://ecommunication.umn.edu/t/1/234/56789/0, even though the user will be taken to a different site.

Clickthrough tracking provides a better measure of engagement by recipients than open tracking.

Mismatched URLs or: How not to look like a phishing scam

As described above, when you use clickthrough tracking, the desitination URL will not match the redirect URL. For that reason, you must not link to any Web pages with the page URL displayed as text. For example, do not create links like this:

See http://www.umn.edu/ for more information.

Instead, display text in the place of the URL:

See the University of Minnesota Web site for more information.

Tracking clickthroughs and displaying URLs will be seen by many e-mail clients and spam filtering software at the server level as a potential phishing scam, and may result in your message being blocked or routed to a recipient's junk mail folder. On a larger scale, this may result in e-mail from the University being blocked or impaired.

Use Lyris for tracking

E-mail engagement is hard to measure, but use of Lyris for tracking the number of times your message is opened and the links that were clicked in the message is the best solution available on campus.